Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, said profit declined 2 per cent as revenue fell for its Lipitor cholesterol pill and Chantix smoking treatment and the rising value of the dollar hurt sales outside the US.
Net income in the first quarter dropped to $2.73 billion, or 40 cents a share, from $2.78 billion, or 41 cents, a year earlier, the company said today in a statement.
Revenue declined 8.3 per cent to $10.9 billion, missing analysts’ expectations by $255 million.
Pfizer chief executive Jeffrey Kindler has said he is trying to boost earnings by agreeing in January to buy rival drugmaker Wyeth of Madison, New Jersey in a deal valued at about $62 billion.
Pfizer has been losing sales of Lipitor, the world’s best-selling drug, since cheaper copies of a similarly acting cholesterol pill, Merck’s Zocor, came on the market in 2006.
“The revenue decline includes the onerous impact of foreign exchange and weakening demand for Lipitor,” Barbara Ryan, a Deutsche Bank analyst, told clients in a note before the release of earnings.
Foreign exchange hurt revenue by $640 million, Pfizer said.
Pfizer reaffirmed its forecast for 2009 earnings, excluding items, at a range of $1.85 to $1.95.
The company is cutting jobs and restructuring research operations as it braces to lose patent protection in 2011 on Lipitor, which accounted for about a quarter of its 2008 revenue.
Pfizer, which employs 2,300 people in Ireland, has cut more than 14,000 jobs gloablly since 2007. An additional 19,000 positions are scheduled to be eliminated after the Wyeth acquisition to save about $2 billion in costs by the end of 2011, the company said in January.
Sales of Lipitor, the world’s top-selling medicine, fell 13 per cent to $2.72 billion. Lipitor sales have declined as US health plans encouraged patients to take generic copies of Zocor by charging lower copayments.
Bloomberg