Belgium’s UCB has confirmed that 2004 net income rose 7% to 363 million euros under Belgian accounting rules, but said that conversion to international financial reporting standards actually reduced the figure by 9% to 329 million euros.

The firm, which busied itself last year with the final stage of its transformation into a pure biopharmaceutical player, selling off all of its non-pharmaceutical activities, and buying UK company, Celltech [[04/10/04f]], [[18/05/04a]], says that it will be paying a dividend of 0.86 euros per share – a 5% increase on the previous year.

UCB also says that its 2005 results will incorporate a substantial gain as a result of the 1.5 billion euro sale of its surface specialities business [[04/10/04f]]. Excluding this capital gain, net income for coming year is expected to be in line with the 2004 IFRS net income.