Drugmaker Pfizer Inc., with research operations in Groton, said Tuesday its first-quarter profit rose 10 percent, despite flat revenue, due to lower costs for production and research and a smaller tax bill, The Associated Press reports.
The world’s biggest drugmaker by revenue, which announced earlier this year it was slashing 1,100 jobs in Connecticut, said its net income was $2.22 billion, or 28 cents per share. That’s up from $2.03 billion, or 25 cents per share, in 2010’s first quarter.
Excluding one-time items, income would have been $4.81 billion, or 60 cents a share, down just over 1 percent from a year ago.
The New York-based maker of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor and impotence pill Viagra said revenue was $16.5 billion, down a half-percent from $16.58 billion a year ago.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected earnings per share of 58 cents and revenue of $16.59 billion. Typically, they exclude one-time items.
Pfizer maintained its forecast given in January for 2011 earnings per share of $2.16 to $2.26, excluding just over $1 in one-time items. But it reduced its revenue forecast, to about $66.2 billion from about $67 billion.
Pfizer for a second time reduced its prior 2012 revenue forecast, this time to $63.5 billion, from $64.25 billion. That year is crucial, because Lipitor, the world’s top-selling drug with nearly $11 billion in annual sales, loses U.S. patent protection at the end of November and generic competition will quickly erode sales.
U.S. sales fell 3 percent to $7.02 billion, while foreign sales hit $9.48 billion, up 2 percent, or 1 percent excluding the impact of favorable currency exchange rates. First-quarter revenue got a boost of $224 million from sales of products made by King Pharmaceuticals, a maker of abuse-resistant and other pain drugs that Pfizer acquired on March 1 for $3.6 billion.
Pfizer said it bought back about $2.2 billion worth of its stock from January through April 30, and now expects to repurchase $5 billion to $7 billion worth of shares this year; in February, it said it would buy back $5 billion in shares.
