Pfizer Edges Past Estimates

Pfizer's full-year earnings per share of $2.06, excluding items, beat the company's updated guidance and analysts' average forecasts by a penny.

Special items had a profound effect on Pfizer's performance, and the biggest came from the $16.6 billion sale of its consumer products division to Johnson & Johnson(J&J Quote) in late December.

Once all items were counted, Pfizer earned $9.45 billion, or $1.32 a share, for the fourth quarter vs. a profit of $2.73 billion, or 37 cents, for the same period in 2005. The results reflected a $7.9 billion gain from the consumer-products division divestiture.

For the full year, Pfizer earned $19.34 billion, or $2.66 a share, on revenue of $48.37 billion. In 2005, the company earned $8.09 billion, or $1.09 a share, on revenue of $47.41 billion.

Like all big drug companies, Pfizer is struggling with the impact of generic competition, and cheap copies of best-sellers continued to hit the company hard last year. Last year's sales of the antidepressant Zoloft dropped 35% from the previous year to $2.11 billion, while revenue from the Zithromax/Zmax antibiotics plunged 69% to $638 million.

There's more trouble on the way. The blood pressure drug Norvasc, Pfizer's second-biggest product, loses U.S. patent protection in September. Norvasc produced worldwide sales $4.87 billion last year, up 3% from 2005. Also, the allergy drug Zytrec loses U.S. patent protection at the end of the year. In 2006, the Zytrec family of drugs contributed $1.57 billion, up 15% from 2005.