Drugmakers Follow Merck, Schering-Plough Lower
Pharmaceutical companies were down across the board on Friday following bleak news coming out of the sector.
Merck
(MRK) - Get Report
warned of an
earnings shortfall for the second quarter and full year, and its shares lost 7.4% to $69 in recent
New York Stock Exchange
trading. Also this morning,
Schering-Plough
(SGP)
was down 6.5% to $37.93 after the company said the
Food and Drug Administration
has found that it still
isn't in compliance with good manufacturing practices. The regulators first found problems with the company's operations in
February.
Additionally,
Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories
, the pharmaceuticals unit of
American Home Products
(AHP)
, said it has received a not-approvable letter from the FDA for a treatment for acute long-bone fractures. The agency's letter focused on the design of the clinical study and the interpretation of the clinical data. Shares of AHP were off 2.2% to $60.83 in afternoon market activity.
Others in the sector were also moving downward.
GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK) - Get Report
was off 0.6% to $56.55, and
Pfizer
(PFE) - Get Report
lost 4.2% to $43.
AstraZeneca
(AZN) - Get Report
dropped 1.4% to $49.20, and
Bristol-Myers Squibb
(BMY) - Get Report
fell 1.6% to $54.45.
Novartis
(NVS) - Get Report
was off 4.7% to $34.98.
Aventis
(AVE)
slipped 0.4% to $78.32, while
Pharmacia
(PHA)
slid 5% to $48.93.
Johnson & Johnson
(JNJ) - Get Report
lost 2.5% to $51.72.