Valeant’s first quarter results “disappointing”

Valeant Pharmaceuticals has reported “disappointing” first quarter results, according to its president and chief executive officer, Timothy C. Tyson. Although revenues increased by ten per cent to $198.8 million (106.4 million pounds) and sales increased by 12 per cent, up to $180.8 million from $161.8 million, the company recorded a net loss of $6.4 million.

Sales in its recently-acquired products, such as Kinerase, Cesamet and Bedoyecta helped to drive sales growth and offset the decreasing sales of its existing non-promoted products, such as Efudex and Ribavirin. Although total North American sales increased by 54 per cent compared to the same period in 2005, European sales decreased by 15 per cent due to wholesaler buyer patterns in Germany and competition from generic manufacturers in Spain, according to the Valeant report.

Mr Tyson said: “Our first quarter results were disappointing and not indicative of our expectations for the rest of 2006, although in line with our recently communicated expectations.”

“Costs were impacted by a temporary plant shutdown in Mexico and other manufacturing variances in the quarter. We have taken aggressive actions to address these manufacturing issues, and we expect that future results will be further improved by our restructuring initiative,” he added.

Mr Tyson said he expected earnings-per-share of $0.50 in 2006, $1.00 in 2007 and $1.90 in 2008.

Valeant is currently researching new drugs for hepatitis C and hepatitis B and it also has interests in neuroscience drugs and researching infectious diseases. The company has three drugs currently in phase III trials.

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