Thermo Fisher has increased its guidance for 2022 predicting that COVID-19 related work and the contribution from PPD would drive growth.

The technology and services firm announced the revision last week during a full year earnings call when it revealed that full year revenue grew 22% to $39.21 billion.

It went on to explain that organic revenue – sales generated by Thermo’s core businesses – increased 17%.

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It also said the contribution from acquisitions – including contract research organization PPD which it bought last April – boosted full year revenue by 3% and COVID-19 response added $9.23 billion.

CEO Marc Casper said business with customers in the pharma and biotech sector was a key driver, growing 25% over the year.

He told analysts “During the year, we saw broad-based strength across our businesses in this end market, including our bioproduction, pharma services, biosciences, chromatography and mass spectrometry businesses as well as in the research and safety market channel.”

COVID-19 response

Casper also cited COVID-19 related activities as a major driver, particularly in the final three months of the year.

“In the quarter, we generated $2.45 billion in COVID-19 response related revenue. This was driven by the emergence of the Omicron variant, which led to strong testing demand as well as our significant role in enabling vaccine and therapy production.

“Throughout 2021, we continue to operate with speed at scale to meet our customers’ needs related to COVID-19 and generated total response revenue of over $9 billion, of which $2 billion were from vaccines and therapies.”

Full guidance

Thermo Fisher increased its revenue guidance for 2022 by $1.5 billion to $42 billion, which would by 7% higher than in 2021.

The firm said it expects COVID-19 testing revenue to be $1 billion higher in 2022 than last year.

It also predicted the contributions from PPD and recombinant proteins specialist PeproTech – which it acquired in January – would drive growth.