London, March 17, 2026, 13:14 GMT
GSK shares eased on Tuesday as the drugmaker disclosed another day of stock repurchases under its long-running £2 billion buyback plan. The shares changed hands at 2,015 pence in a 12:47 GMT trade, down about 0.5% on delayed London data, while GSK said it had bought 628,000 shares on March 16, taking total repurchases since Feb. 17 to 10.55 million shares. 1
The filing matters now because the fourth tranche of the programme is still active and scheduled to run until April 24. In a buyback, a company repurchases its own shares to reduce the number in the market and support earnings per share, or profit per share; this tranche is worth up to £450 million and sits within a £2 billion plan due to run through the end of the second quarter. 2
GSK entered 2026 from a firmer base. The company reported 2025 sales of £32.7 billion, forecast 3% to 5% turnover growth this year and 7% to 9% growth in core operating profit and core earnings per share, its adjusted measure of profit, and reiterated a 70 pence full-year dividend after saying £1.4 billion of the repurchase plan had already been executed. 3
That mix of guidance and cash returns helped send the shares to a 26-year high after February results; Tuesday’s price still left the stock well above its 1,242.5 pence year low, but short of the 2,282 pence year high. 4
Investors are also watching whether GSK can widen the revenue base around Arexvy, its respiratory syncytial virus shot. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week expanded approval to adults aged 18 to 49 who are at increased risk, opening a younger market where Arexvy will compete with Pfizer’s Abrysvo and Moderna’s mRESVIA; the shot still needs a recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before it can be used in that group. 5
Sanjay Gurunathan, GSK’s head of vaccines and infectious diseases research and development, said the broader label could address a “significant medical need.” GSK said the annual RSV burden in U.S. adults aged 18 to 49 is about 17,000 hospitalisations, 277,000 emergency department admissions and 1.97 million outpatient visits. 6
But the buyback will not answer the bigger question over growth on its own. GSK has said vaccines and general medicines could be flat or down by a low-single-digit percentage this year, and Barclays analysts said February guidance was slightly below consensus because of foreign-exchange pressure. 7
Company announcements show GSK posted transaction-in-own-shares notices on Monday, Tuesday and on several earlier March dates, underlining how steadily the repurchase is being executed. 8
