Novartis Results

Novartis has already paid $11billion to Nestle last year for 25% and has agreed to pay another $28billion for 52% in Alcon still with Nestle. Hwvr, the remianing minority shareholders want the same or a fair deal while NVS expects a deep discount on the remaining

Results for December from the NY times

Drug maker Novartis (NYSE:NVS) AG on Tuesday reported a 54 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit to $2.32 billion on strong sales and favorable exchange rates, and announced the appointment of Joe Jimenez as its new chief executive.

Earnings per share rose 53 percent to $1.01 from $0.66 in the same quarter of 2008, when Novartis posted a net profit of $1.51 billion, the company said.

Sales of its products, which include the hypertension drug Diovan and anticancer drug Glivec -- known as Gleevec in the United States, rose 28 percent to $12.93 billion in the September-December period from $10.08 billion the previous year.

"The fourth quarter has been especially strong," outgoing CEO Daniel Vasella told reporters in a conference call, noting that Novartis benefited from better exchange rates and the shipment of large orders of swine flu vaccine in the final three months of 2009.

Interestingly, as mentioned otherwise as well, NVS did pursue a patent centric strategy and lost much blood in India/elsewhere. In the vaccines market also it refuses to get into emerging market specific pricing like GSK giving away free vaccines etc.

Also its $3.5 billion Diovan (2005) runs out of patent in 2012 . It has been creating Hypertension / BP reducing extensions, esp one with Pfizer..It also has a vaccine coy purchase from 2005. It expects Galvus to give $2 b in sales by then in the Type 2 Diabetes market. Indian drugmakers and others have also marked down NVS' Gleevec for patent challenges. Gleevec is its high volume drug in Cancer with another $3b in sales

Novartis is also going after the diabetes market with Galvus, a once-daily oral treatment for type 2 diabetes. Analysts project that the drug, filed in March, could hit $2.1 billion in sales by 2012, as it competes with Merck’s Januvia.

The biggest drug approval news for Novartis came from the generic division, which received clearance in the U.S. and EU for Omnitrope, which is not a biogeneric, but a ‘follow-on version of a previously approved recombinant biotechnology drug.’ That approval may open the door to a new era of follow-on biologics, as more of the pioneer biodrugs show their age.

ACQUISITIONS

Target: Chiron Corp.
Price: $5.4 billion
Announced: May 2006

Target: NeuTec Pharma
Price: $569 million
Announced: June 2006
More Vax

In September 2005, Novartis bid to acquire beleaguered biopharma/vaccine/blood testing company Chiron for approximately $5.1 billion, a sum representing the 58% of shares that Novartis didn’t already own. The deal finally closed at $5.4 billion, giving Novartis a position in the vaccines field, a $10.8 billion market that analysts project will grow at an annual 20% clip in the next five years.