Predicting the stronger sales of vaccines against swine flu in future, Sanofi-Aventis SA raised its viewpoint for full-year earnings per share growth to 11 percent on the back of the forecast, as compared to 10 percent growth previously.

Augmenting the sales due to the Swine flu vaccine, several drug makers have raised their outlook for the revenue in the next quarter; Sanofi furthermore expects to make $500 million in sales of the swine flu vaccine in the fourth quarter. "We will see quite a big bonus of sales (in the fourth quarter) of drugs for H1N1 and seasonal flu", noted Chris Viehbacher, Chief Executive at Sanofi.

With the shipment beginning in September, the H1N1 drug sales were 78 million Euros in the past quarter, however the extra revenues from swine flu vaccines will only temporarily help Sanofi's battle to overcome a loss of about a fifth of its revenues in the next years payable to patent expires on blockbuster drugs, making way for cheaper copies from generic drug makers.

Consequently anticipating the worldwide stretch of HINI vaccine to last until April, Viehbacher is glancing outside the company's own labs for products to sustain sales growth as older drugs like Plavix and Eloxatin face standard competition. Subsequently, agreed to buy a French maker of nutritional supplements today and an experimental cancer drug from Micromet Inc yesterday.

"I would see us continue to sell more or less at the same rate into 2010, at least up until late spring. Beyond that it is difficult to see if the pandemic will continue", he said.

Spending about 6.2 billion Euros on acquisitions this year to gain generic drug makers in Brazil, Mexico and India, Viehbacher devices to continue with the same pace, stating "a major acquisition is not on the radar screen".