Pfizer today reported a higher-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, helped by lower taxes, a weak dollar and growing demand for its drugs for nerve pain, kidney cancer and smoking cession.
Earnings for the world's largest drug maker fell to $2.88 billion, or 42 cents per share, from $9.45 billion, or $1.32 per share, a year earlier, when Pfizer reported a big gain from the sale of its consumer health business to Johnson & Johnson.
Excluding special items, earnings were 52 cents per share. Analysts on average had forecast 47 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.
New York-based Pfizer raised the lower end of its 2008 profit forecast, which excludes special items, to $2.35 per share from $2.31 while keeping the top end at $2.45. Reuters Estimates' average earnings outlook was $2.35.
Pfizer in the past year has cut more than 10,000 jobs and is paring other costs to keep earnings growing amid generic competition for several of its former blockbusters, including antidepressant Zoloft and blood pressure treatment Norvasc.
It is also tightening its belt ahead of the US patent expiration, possibly by 2010, for its Lipitor cholesterol fighter.
Quarterly company revenue rose 4 per cent to $13.1 billion, well above the Reuters Estimates forecast of $12.18 billion. But revenue would have declined by 1 per cent if not for the weak dollar, which raises the value of sales outside the United States.
"With strong product performance, cost reductions, improved productivity and the benefits of foreign exchange, we achieved both revenue and (earnings) growth despite losing US market exclusivity for Norvasc and Zoloft," Pfizer chief executive Jeff Kindler said in a statement.
Global sales of Lyrica, which treats pain caused by shingles and fibromyalgia, leaped 60 per cent to $564 million in the fourth quarter, making it the standout among Pfizer's relatively new medicines.
Sales of Sutent, recently launched to treat kidney cancer, jumped 75 per cent to $182 million. Revenue from Champix more than tripled to $311 million despite warnings that the smoking-cession pill may cause depression and suicidal behavior.
Arthritis treatment Celebrex continued to rebound despite concerns about cardiovascular risk, with sales jumping 18 percent to $637 million. Anti-impotence pill Viagra's sales rose 10 per cent to $498 million.
Although global sales of Lipitor rose 3 per cent to $3.43 billion, they would have fallen 1 per cent without the positive foreign exchange factors.
Its global sales fell 2 per cent to $12.7 billion for the full year, hurt by competition from inexpensive generic forms of Merck & Co's Zocor.