<div id="subtitle">Bristol-Myers, Wyeth turn in strong results, wrapping fair quarter for pharmaceutical industry</div><div><p>Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Wyeth on Thursday turned in two of the drug industry's best second-quarter performances, with both reporting strong profit growth and sailing past Wall Street expectations as they cut costs aggressively.</p><p>Roche Holding AG of Switzerland, however, missed analysts' forecasts and, despite strong sales, its profit plunged due to costs for buying biotech giant Genentech.</p><p>The three profit reports Thursday all but wrapped up an earnings season for the pharmaceuticals industry dominated by talk of big mergers, relentless cost-cutting and how the global recession, competition from generic drugs and unfavorable currency exchange rates all were squeezing revenue.</p><p>Despite their troubles, most drugmakers managed to narrowly surpass Wall Street expectations — mainly because of cost controls, but often because of resilient demand for their medicines.</p><p>"You've got an industry that in the news day in, day out, seems to be taking a pounding," said Erik Gordon, a professor and analyst at University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.</p><p>He cited increasing generic competition, numerous warnings about dangerous drug side effects, difficulties in getting new drugs approved, unproductive research programs and overpriced acquisitions such as Roche's $46.8 billion takeover of Genentech in late March and Eli Lilly & Co.'s $6 billion purchase of ImClone Systems Inc. last fall.</p><p>"I actually think it was a pretty good quarter, considering all of the above," Gordon said, adding, "Bristol and Wyeth, they're the stars for this quarter."</p><p>Besides strong cost-cutting, the two companies benefited from slightly smaller hits to revenue than most competitors took from the strong dollar. Both raised at least some segments of their 2009 profit forecasts.</p><p>In trading Thursday afternoon, Bristol-Myers shares were up 64 cents, or 3.2 percent, at $20.93 and Wyeth shares were up 27 cents at $47.13.</p><p>Bristol-Myers posted a 29 percent profit jump due to higher sales of several key products, including blood thinner Plavix, the world's second-bestselling medicine.</p><p>It posted net income of $983 million, or 49 cents per share, up from $764 million, or 38 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 3.5 percent to $5.4 billion.</p><p>Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting, on average, earnings per share of 47 cents and revenue of $5.3 billion.</p><p>Plavix sales where up 11 percent, to $1.54 billion, while sales of psychiatric drug Abilify jumped 22 percent to $643 million and HIV drug Sustiva was up 11 percent to $312 million.</p><p>New York-based Bristol's report came the morning after it agreed to a promising $2.1 billion acquisition of longtime partner biotech company Medarex Inc., its antibody technology for creating drugs and about two dozen potential drugs in development.</p><p>On top of that, Bristol executives said they're now on the hunt for the next target for their "String of Pearls" strategy of transforming into a biopharmaceutical company by buying biotech drugs or companies in priority disease areas.</p><p>Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth posted a 13 percent jump in profit, to $1.27 billion, or 94 cents per share. That was up from $1.12 billion, or 83 cents a share, a year earlier.</p><p>Revenue was down 4 percent, to $5.7 billion; analysts were expecting $5.58 billion.</p><p>Excluding restructuring charges and costs for its pending $68 billion acquisition by Pfizer — the industry's biggest deal this year — income would have been 98 cents per share, 13 cents more than Wall Street expected.</p><p>The other big deal is Merck & Co.'s $41.1 billion purchase of New Jersey neighbor Schering-Plough Corp., set to close late in the year. The two have a joint venture selling cholesterol drugs whose sales have been declining, lowering second-quarter results for both companies.</p><p>Basel-based Roche reported a 29 percent drop in net income for the first six months, citing costs related to the takeover of California-based Genentech.</p><p>Net income totaled 4.1 billion Swiss francs ($3.84 billion), down from 5.7 billion francs in the first half of 2008 and below analysts' expectations of 4.9 billion francs.</p><p>However, revenue was up 9 percent to 24 billion francs ($22.5 billion), led by sales of cancer drugs such as Avastin and stockpiling of antiviral medicine Tamiflu amid the swine flu pandemic.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=55441184&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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