Wyeth earned $1.2 billion, or 89 cents per share, compared with $1.25 billion, or 92 cents per share, a year earlier.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wyeth <WYE.N> posted slightly lower first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, hurt by the recent launch of generic forms of its Protonix ulcer drug, but surprisingly strong sales of other medicines enabled the company to beat Wall Street profit forecasts.
Wyeth earned $1.2 billion, or 89 cents per share, compared with $1.25 billion, or 92 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding special items, the drugmaker earned 94 cents per share. Analysts' average forecast was 90 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.
"The earnings number was solid and came in above expectations; it's a good beginning for the year," said David Katz, chief investment officer of asset manager Matrix Asset Advisors in New York.
!ADVERTISEMENT!Global revenue rose 6 percent to $5.71 billion, above the average Wall Street forecast of $5.49 billion. Excluding the favorable impact of the weak dollar, revenue rose just 1 percent.
In late January Wyeth had forecast flat revenue and lower earnings for 2008 due to generic competition for Protonix and assumptions about possible generic competition for other medicines.
On Tuesday it said it was on track to meet its forecast for profit this year of $3.35 to $3.49 per share excluding special items. That forecast represents a decrease of 1 percent to 5 percent from 2007.
"Wyeth historically has been conservative, not raising its yearly estimates even when beating quarterly forecasts, and that seems to be the case now," Katz said.
Protonix had been one of Wyeth's biggest products, with annual sales of more than $1.7 billion, until Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd <TEVA.O> <TEVA.TA> introduced its generic version in December despite an unresolved patent dispute with Wyeth.
In late January India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd <SUN.BO> aggravated Wyeth's pain by launching its own copycat version of Protonix in the United States.
Consequently, Protonix sales fell by two-thirds in the first quarter, to $159 million.
But other big Wyeth drugs had strong sales gains, including depression treatment Effexor, Enbrel for arthritis, Prevnar to prevent childhood infections, and the Premarin line of female hormone replacement drugs.
Effexor sales rose 15 percent to $1.02 billion, while Prevnar sales jumped 14 percent to $706 million. Sales of Enbrel, which Wyeth markets outside the United States and Canada, soared 36 percent to $606 million despite strong competition from similar products sold by Johnson & Johnson <JNJ.N> and Abbott Laboratories Inc <ABT.N>.
Premarin sales rose 15 percent to $276 million, continuing to recover somewhat from long-standing concerns that the drugs can increase the risk of breast cancer and stroke.
(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and John Wallace)
