For Pfizer Inc., the stock market is a fickle mistress.
The pharmaceutical giant, whose campuses in Groton and New London employ nearly 5,000 people, reported Wednesday a 34 percent increase in fourth-quarter 2009 revenues compared with the same period the previous year, and the company said profits nearly tripled over the same period.
Those numbers would normally dazzle. On Wednesday, they merely elicited a muffled yawn, as Pfizer stock fell more than 2 percent, closing the day at $18.62.
Stock analysts focused on earnings per share that were lower than expected and a forecast that this year’s earnings will be as much as 17 cents a share below traders’ expectations.
“Pfizer’s business update was not what we hoped for,” said Leerink Swann analyst Seamus Fernandez, who had been recommending buying the company’s stock. “That being said, Pfizer’s still attractively valued.”
Les Funtleyder, a health care analyst for Miller Tabak & Co. in New York City, said the earnings per share of 49 cents, after excluding one-time expenses, were off 1 cent from Wall Street expectations, though revenues were higher than anticipated.
“We think the Street will be a bit disappointed but we think half a quarter is not enough time to judge the success of the now combined Pfizer-Wyeth,” Funtleyder said in a commentary.
Pfizer’s profits were significantly higher in the fourth quarter compared with the previous year partially because of the first-time contribution to the budget of newly acquired Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which added $3.3 billion in revenues.
The company also saw profits increase because it took a one-time charge of $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 to settle a U.S. Justice Department investigation of off-label product promotions, while its legal expenses for the same period last quarter were only $124 million.
In addition, Pfizer saw a $419 million increase in sales of the company’s legacy products as well as a $469 million jump tied to favorable foreign-exchange rates related to a weaker dollar.
For the year, Pfizer finished with $50 billion in revenues, a 4 percent increase from 2008. Net income for the year was up 7 percent.
“The operational improvements were driven partially by the reduction in workforce as well as manufacturing and research and development site exits,” Pfizer said in a statement.
Pfizer said it took on more than 40,000 workers when it acquired Wyeth but has reduced the combined staff by about 4,200 since the October megamerger. The company at the end of the year had a work force of about 116,500. “We are pleased with the rapid pace of the integration and our ability to quickly realize the benefits of our combined organization,” Jeffrey B. Kindler, Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
What’s more, Pfizer management was upbeat about its pipeline of experimental medicines, including the Alzheimer’s drug Dimebon and its JAK-3 cancer treatment. Kindler said 34 of the company’s current 133 compounds in development have reached the final stage of development.
“We are more enthusiastic about our late-stage pipeline than we have been in years,” Kindler said in a Webcast conducted a few hours after Pfizer’s earnings were released.
The company also is talking up its ability to weather the loss of patent protection for Lipitor, the world’s leading medicine, when it faces generic competition in November 2012.
“We are structured for a post-2012 world,” said Ian Read, president of worldwide pharmaceutical operations for Pfizer. “We are adding field force as fast as we can … in China and Brazil and some of the other markets.”
