Woodford set for gains as AstraZeneca jumps on drug approval

Income stars such as Neil Woodford and Bill Mott are set for boosts to their portfolios as AstraZeneca jumped over 3% this morning following the approval of a drug the pharma giant pinned $2bn of future sales.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the sale of Brilinta, a blood thinning drug used to reduce the risk of heart attack, giving a lift to Astra's share price.

Shares rose as much as 3.5% when the FSTE 100 opened before losing a few points to settle around a 3.4% gain. The share price was £31.36 at around 8.28am, while the 52-week high is £33.89.

Jeremy Batstone-Carr, an analyst at Charles Stanley, said Brilinta is forecast to deliver peak sales of $2bn over the next eight years with $750m derived from the US so the FDA approval was key for Astra's future earnings, particularly as the group is facing a number of drugs falling off patent.

Astra's share price had been drifting downwards of late due to nervousness surrounding the approval of this product as well as the FDA rejecting the approval of dapagliflozin, a diabetes drug, in the advisory committee stages.

Invesco Perpetual's Neil Woodford has Astra as his top holding on both the £11bn High Income fund and £8.6bn Income fund, amounting to 8.52% and 8.47% of the portfolios respectively.

Bill Mott has 4.8% of the PSigma Income fund in Astra.