Pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) reported a 6% drop in second-quarter profit Monday following last year’s divestiture of the company’s nutrition business. However earnings rose on an adjusted basis following better-than-expected sales of its best-selling drug Plavix.
The drug maker reported a profit of $927 million, or 53 cents a share, down from $983 million, or 49 cents a share, from a year ago. The company’s outstanding shares dropped 255 million from a year ago as part of a buy-back program.
Excluding one-time items, the company earned 54 cents per share as revenue increased 2% to $4.77 billion from $4.67 billion last year.
Analysts had been looking for the drug maker to earn 53 cents a share on $4.86 billion in revenue.
Last year, Bristol-Myers divested the infant formula company Mead Johnson (MJN) as part of the company’s strategy to focus on specific types of prescription drugs. The company’s focused approach has stood in contrast to others in the business like Merck (MRK) and Pfizer (PFE), who have grown and diversified in this recession.
In the quarter sales of Plavix, which the company co-owns with Sanofi-Aventis (SNY), rose 6% from a year ago to $1.627 billion. The company’s anti-psychotic Abilify reported a 2% drop in sales to $633 million.
In the company’s drug-development pipeline, the company that a Phase III clinical trial of its melanoma drug ipilimumab showed statistically-significant improvement in patients who were previously-treated. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The company reaffirmed its 2010 earnings guidance of $1.84 to $1.94 a share and reaffirmed its 2013 earnings guidance of $1.95 per share.
The company issued 2013 guidance because Plavix is scheduled to go off-patent in 2012 and is expected to drastically impact earnings. However Bristol-Myers said it believes its pipeline along with continued sales of Abilify will keep earnings strong.
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