AstraZeneca’s CFO On The Company’s Bet To Increase Its U.S. Business

usncan 2025-08-05

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📝 usncan Note: AstraZeneca’s CFO On The Company’s Bet To Increase Its U.S. Business

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President Donald Trump has not shied away from making demands of private industry, and he formalized one of them last week. On Thursday, he sent letters to 17 pharmaceutical companies, demanding that they lower prices for U.S. customers. The letters are in keeping with the “Most-Favored Nation” executive order Trump signed in May, aiming to align U.S. drug prices with those for other developed countries.

Responses have varied. Pfizer said it’s working with the Trump Administration and Congress on solutions to increase access and affordability for Americans. The trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said that importing foreign drug price controls to the United States would “undermine American leadership,” and suggested that policymakers instead rein in the “health care middlemen” who add complexity to the system and further drive up prices.

But before these letters were sent, one of the world’s largest drugmakers had already announced its intent to lower U.S. prices. AstraZeneca, the British pharmaceutical giant that makes key treatment drugs for cancer, cardiovascular health and respiratory conditions, had already announced serious efforts to reduce U.S. prices. On the company’s Q2 earnings call last Tuesday, CEO Pascal Soriot said that they believe a “rebalancing of pricing around the world is necessary. The U.S. can no longer pay for the R&D of the world.”

In an interview after the earnings report, CFO Aradhana Sarin told me that while this is a complicated situation, AstraZeneca planned on increasing and improving its U.S. business, even before Trump’s second term was guaranteed. Last year, the company announced a goal to deliver $80 billion in annual revenue by 2030—up from $45.8 billion in 2023—with half of that coming from the U.S. And that’s through new business, not increasing prices on Americans. Drug prices here, she said, are determined through a complicated system.

“If you’re familiar with the US healthcare system, there’s a lot of money that goes in between,” Sarin told me. “People think of pharma companies benefiting from that, but that’s often not the case.”

Today’s edition of Forbes CFO focuses on Sarin, her nontraditional path to becoming CFO of a major pharmaceutical company, and how she’s leading the company on a strategy intended to both encourage business growth and increase ties to the U.S.

This is the published version of Forbes’ CFO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief finance officers and other leaders focused on the budget. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Tuesday.

A NONTRADITIONAL PATH

Most CFOs have deep backgrounds in business and finance, which Sarin has. She earned an MBA from Stanford University and has worked in the investment banking space for more than two decades. She moved to working in corporate strategy for Alexion Pharmaceuticals in 2017, becoming its CFO in 2019, and became AstraZeneca’s CFO when it acquired Alexion in 2021.

But prior to all of that, Sarin had been a medical doctor in India and Tanzania.

“Learning medicine was a lot of fun, but practicing was not the same,” she said. “And I felt like I could do much more going broader into business.”

Hands-on experience in how the medical field works has given Sarin important insight into the science behind drug development. AstraZeneca spends about $14 billion on R&D annually, she said, and the drug development cycle is long. It’s not unusual for a drug to take eight to 10 years to get through the regulatory pipeline. And the entire process is fraught with risks. It’s hard to know which potential products will end up being successful.

AstraZeneca CFO Aradhana Sarin.

AstraZeneca

“The background helps in making the judgment and the risk assessment of where you want to put that type of R&D money behind the highest probability of success assets, knowing that you are still taking risks,” she said.

Knowing the pharmaceutical market from the patient care side also helps to make business decisions, Sarin said. Understanding the unmet need a drug can solve—as well as who the target patient is, how they will get the drug and how they will pay for it—informs the corporate process.

“It makes a huge difference when you think of it from the lens of a clinician and say, ‘Okay, as a physician, how would you treat this patient?’” she said.

INVESTMENT AND OPPORTUNITY

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot announces the company’s planned $50 billion investment in the U.S. at an event in Washington, D.C. last month, as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and AstraZeneca executive vice president for global operations Pam Cheng look on.

AstraZeneca’s big U.S. push looks like something that many international companies are pursuing today, both to escape new impending Trump tariffs and to appease the president. Sarin said that isn’t the case for AstraZeneca, which announced its plan to expand its U.S. business last spring.

Last month, AstraZeneca made another announcement deepening its commitment to the U.S. It will invest $50 billion in U.S. facilities for R&D and manufacturing by 2030. But, Sarin said, this announcement had little to do with Trump.

“For us, it was a business decision,” she said. “We didn’t rush to make any announcements as some of our peers did several months back.”

The most significant portion of the investment, a manufacturing facility in Virginia that will make drug substances for its metabolic and weight management portfolio, will represent AstraZeneca’s largest single manufacturing investment in the world. Sarin said that the deal materialized quickly. AstraZeneca had a clear vision for what they wanted to build and was looking at sites in several states.

But Virginia had its eyes on the prize. Sarin said there were just 33 days from their first conversation with the state to the facility announcement. AstraZeneca tends to move quickly in negotiations, she said, but governments often do not. However, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin was an investment banker before he came to government, and Sarin noted the state’s current economic development office is structured more like one in the private sector, with analysts and economists looking for the best opportunities and seizing on them.

“Bringing what you see often on the private side and on the business side—that type of working-style agility, get-it-done type of agenda and objectives to do this—I think made a big difference.”

The exact location and timeline for this facility construction have not yet been announced. The other areas where AstraZeneca plans to invest include expanding its R&D facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland; an R&D center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; manufacturing facilities for cell therapy in Rockville, Maryland and Tarzana, California; and expanding manufacturing facilities in Mount Vernon, Indiana and Coppell, Texas.

EXPANSION PROGRESS

A person walks by the sign at the AstraZeneca facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

AstraZeneca is making progress with its goals to expand its business, both overall and in the U.S. In its earnings last week representing the first half of 2025, the company reported more than $28 billion in revenues, an increase of 11% above 2024. The U.S. represents about 43% of that total.

To focus more on the U.S., Sarin said AstraZeneca had already decided to shift more of its operations here.

“We have been deliberate on research. Not just labs—which we do have plenty of labs as well, but also clinical trials,” Sarin said. “There’s been a big investment to make sure.”

AstraZeneca currently strives to do at least 10%, if not more, of all clinical trials in the U.S., she said. It represents a new tack; more of the trials used to take place in Europe.

However, increased reach into the U.S. isn’t the only place where AstraZeneca is seeing growth. In its results last week, the company saw expansion across the board. Cancer drugs represented 44% of its earnings. Respiratory and immunology drugs saw 15% growth in the quarter, and Sarin remarked that many of those have only been on the market a few years, so there is a lot of runway for more growth.

There’s more in AstraZeneca’s R&D pipeline, Sarin said, but there’s also bound to be growth as some of the company’s newer drugs are found to be effective in treating other conditions.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

The degree of expertise that Sarin has in the business of the company she works at is rare, but she said that any CFO can become a true strategic partner. It takes time to devote to learning about the industry and its ins and outs, and CFOs now have a powerful opportunity to use their expertise—both about finances and industry—to shape what a company does going forward.

Sarin says she sees herself as a transformational leader, which all CFOs should be. CFOs will remain central to company strategy, she said, because they control the money—which touches everything the company does. No amount of technology, AI platform or change to the structure of business can shake the CFO’s importance.

“The CFO would be very much a transformation driver because businesses will still be about money or how money flows,” she said.

COMINGS + GOINGS

Packaging provider Sealed Air named Kristen Actis-Grande as its new chief financial officer, effective August 25. Actis-Grande joins from MSC Industrial Supply Co., where she worked as executive vice president and chief financial officer.
Shipping solutions company Pitney Bowes appointed Paul Evans as EVP, chief financial officer and treasurer, effective July 29. Evans most recently worked as chief operating officer at America’s Auto Auction Group, and is replacing Robert Gold.
Nuclear technology firm BWX Technologies promoted Mike Fitzgerald to its chief financial officer role. Fitzgerald, who had been interim CFO since May 12, was previously the vice president for finance and chief accounting officer at BWXT.

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