PLANEGG/MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - The drug researcher Morphosys suffered a sharp drop in sales in the third quarter. This was due to a sharp drop in license income, the SDax-listed company announced late Wednesday evening in Planegg near Munich. This resulted in an even greater operating loss, i.e. in day-to-day business, than a year ago. Meanwhile, revenue fell by around a third to 63.8 million euros, according to the Group. The operating result reached minus 51 million euros - a year earlier Morphosys had reported minus 29.3 million euros.

Morphosys has been in the red for some time due to high research costs. However, the net loss in the past quarter fell slightly to 119.6 million euros, mainly due to lower expenses in the financial result. The market had expected even worse results in terms of turnover and operating profit, but analysts had expected the consolidated loss to be much lower.

The Management Board headed by Group CEO Jean-Paul Kress also confirmed the forecasts. Only recently, the management had raised the sales target for its most important drug Monjuvi, but lowered its gross margin assumptions due to write-downs on raw materials./tav/ngu/mis