The GSK share price decline has accelerated over the past six months, leaving investors who held £6,000 in the stock at that point with roughly £5,100 today, before dividends. The FTSE 100 pharmaceuticals group is down 15% over six months even as it reported solid underlying trading in its second-quarter results on 28 July.
The Q2 figures showed turnover of £7,986m, up 6% at constant exchange rates, with year-to-date revenue reaching £15,502m, up 5% at constant exchange rates, according to GSK’s own results release. Core operating margin for the quarter was 32.9%, up 1.1 percentage points at actual exchange rates.
A £1.3bn Write-Down Overshadows the Trading Beat
The headline numbers were harder to ignore. Total operating profit fell 75% in the quarter, driven by a £1.3bn impairment linked primarily to camlipixant, a drug in development that failed to meet expectations. Core operating profit, which strips out such charges, rose 7% to £2.8bn.
New chief executive Luke Miels, who took over after Emma Walmsley’s departure was announced in September 2025, also unveiled a three-year cost take-out programme targeting £1.9bn in savings. Alongside that, GSK plans to start more than 20 Phase III trials in 2026, up from around 10 previously expected, with the R&D portfolio covering 62 separate assets.
Q2 operating cash flow was £2.9bn, roughly twice the first-quarter level, and free cash flow reached £2.0bn for the period.
GSK Share Price Decline in Context: Two Decades of Slim Returns
The six-month drop sits within a longer pattern of underperformance. GSK’s share price stood at around 1,500p in August 2006; it trades at 1,815p today, a gain of just 21% over two decades. R&D spending has risen sharply throughout that period, reaching £6.57bn last year, as the company tried and largely failed to convince investors it has the drugs to deliver growth.
The dividend record has been similarly frustrating. The board froze the payout at 80p per share in 2015 and held it there for seven years. The Haleon demerger in July 2022 complicated matters further. GSK distributed the bulk of its stake in the Consumer Healthcare joint venture (which it had built with Pfizer) to shareholders, who received one Haleon share per GSK share held, before a share consolidation gave investors four new GSK shares for every five existing ones, according to GSK’s corporate actions disclosure. Following the separation, Pfizer retained a 32% stake in Haleon while GSK kept 13.5%.
The dividend fell to 57.75p per share after the demerger. The GSK dividend calendar shows the 2023 full-year total at 58p per share. The payout recovered to 66p last year. For 2026, GSK has guided to 70p per share.
Full-year profit figures illustrate the uneven trajectory. GSK reported profits of £7.93bn in 2025, £6.01bn in 2024 (hit by multi-billion-pound Zantac settlement provisions), £6.75bn in 2023, £6.73bn in 2022, and £6.20bn in 2021. The 2025 number was boosted by strong growth in Specialty Medicines and Vaccines.
GSK filed its 2025 Annual Report on Form 20-F with the SEC on 6 March 2026, covering the year ended 31 December 2025.
Valuation and What Comes Next
GSK’s shares trade on a price-to-earnings ratio of around 10.8, with a trailing dividend yield of 3.64%. The stock is up 30% over one year, lifted by the management change, but the six-month GSK share price decline has trimmed much of that gain.
Miels is targeting more than £40bn in annual sales by 2031. For 2026, the company expects sales and core operating profit to land at the upper end of guidance ranges of 3% to 5% and 7% to 9% respectively.
Patent expiries and pipeline replenishment remain the central tests. The cost programme and the step-up in Phase III activity are the clearest signals yet of how Miels intends to address them. Whether the 2031 sales target anchors the share price or fades into GSK’s long history of missed milestones is the question investors will be weighing at the third-quarter update.
