Pfizer 3Q profit triples vs. weak year-ago results

Pfizer Inc.'s profit tripled in the third quarter, mainly because a huge charge depressed last year's results, despite flat sales. Its earnings narrowly beat Wall Street's earnings expectations.

But the company behind impotence treatment Viagra and the top-selling cholesterol fighter Lipitor reduced its earnings forecast for 2008 even as it raised the lower end of its revenue forecasts for the year.

Its shares rose 44 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $17.78.

Pfizer said it earned $2.3 billion, or 34 cents per share, in the July-September quarter, up from $761 million, or 11 cents per share, a year ago.

Excluding one-time items, net income amounted to $4.18 billion, or 62 cents a share -- 2 cents a share more than analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected.

In the current quarter, the New York-based company took a charge of $894 million for a settlement announced Friday to end most of the lawsuits over its withdrawn painkiller Bextra and another pain reliever still on the market, Celebrex. It also had $716 million worth of charges related to its cost-cutting program and other one-time items.

A year ago, Pfizer took a $2.1 billion after-tax charge in the third quarter, related to its decision to stop selling inhaled insulin product Exubera, which had dismal sales and then was linked to risk of lung cancer.

Pfizer said its revenue slipped to $11.97 billion from $11.99 billion a year ago, even though favorable exchange rates due to the weak dollar boosted sales by 5 percent. Analysts had been expecting revenue of $12.01 billion.

Pfizer reported a 13 percent drop in U.S. sales of Lipitor. Total revenues from Lipitor, the top-selling drug in the world, were down 1 percent at $3.14 billion.

The company said revenues for three drugs with recent generic competition -- blood-pressure medicine Norvasc, allergy drug Zyrtec and colon-cancer drug Camptosar -- fell by 48 percent, or a combined $627 million.

Several other drugs had double-digit sales increases, including Viagra, fibromyalgia drug Lyrica, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder treatment Geodon and Aricept for Alzheimer's disease. Celebrex sales rose 8 percent to $625 million amid a new ad campaign.

Pharmaceutical sales totaled $10.98 billion , animal health sales were up 11 percent to $708 million and other revenue dropped 9 percent to $289 million.

"We remain on track to meet our 2008 objectives, despite the turbulent global economy," Chief Executive Jeff Kindler said in a statement.

The company noted it has cut annual costs by a total of $1.7 billion from 2006 levels and now expects to get to $2 billion in reductions by the end of this year. Those cuts include reducing the work force by 14,600 people since January 2007. Job cuts and closure of several manufacturing plants helped slash Pfizer's cost of sales by 54 percent in the quarter, to $2.1 billion.

The company reduced its earnings per share forecast for 2008, to a range of $1.61 to $1.71, from $1.73 to $1.88, citing the Bextra settlement. It also raised the lower end of its revenue forecasts for the year, from $47 billion to $48 billion, but kept the top end at $49 billion.

"With our strong balance sheet and operating cash flow, we remain confident that we have the financial flexibility to successfully execute our strategies and meet our financial objectives in the face of the current macroeconomic environment," Chief Financial Officer Frank D'Amilio said in a statement.

For the first months, net income rose 45 percent, to $7.84 billion or $1.16 per share, from $5.42 billion or 78 cents per share in the January-September period of 2007. Revenues edged up 1 percent, to $35.95 billion.