Company news

New York-based Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, said it isn’t interested in breaking up its animal health unit after Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. expressed interest in buying some of its products. Lilly’s Elanco Animal Health unit, which had $1.4 billion in sales last year, has been eager for acquisitions lately, buying up New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson’s European animal health assets early this year. Lilly Chief Financial Officer Derica Rice said Lilly would certainly take a look at Pfizer’s animal health assets, if Pfizer puts them up for sale. “We will watch how that situation evolves, and if there are some assets that become available that we are interested in, yes, we will pursue them,” Rice told investors and analysts on a conference call July 21. But later that same day, Pfizer spokeswoman Joan Campion told Bloomberg News that Pfizer would rather sell or spin off its animal health business as a whole, not in pieces. Pfizer’s animal health unit had sales last year of $3.5 billion.

It’s not yet clear how Express Scripts Inc.’s $29.1 billion deal to acquire rival Medco Health Solutions will affect the companies’ central Indiana operations—or their 800-plus employees at two facilities here. New Jersey-based Medco has 430 workers at a $140 million automated pharmacy and distribution center in Whitestown. It planned to ramp up Boone County employment to 1,300, but has fallen short of that goal after losing some large contracts. St. Louis-based Express Scripts, which acquired WellPoint Inc.’s pharmacy benefits subsidiary in 2009, said last year it had 400 employees at a specialty drug distribution facility near Indianapolis International Airport and planned to add 180 positions there by 2012. Medco announced last week that it lost an $11 billion contract with Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc., accounting for 17 percent of its business. The loss drops Medco to No. 3 in the industry, trailing Express Scripts and CVS CareMark Corp.

Eli Lilly and Co. posted better-than-expected second-quarter results and raised its 2011 profit forecast. The Indianapolis-based drugmaker earned $1.2 billion, or $1.07 per share, in the three months ended June 30, a decline of 11 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago. The declines were driven mainly by a 16-percent rise in sales and marketing expenses—used to help launch a new diabetes drug Tradjenta, which Lilly is co-marketing with Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH. Lilly also suffered increasing costs from the 2010 U.S. health care reform law, which mandated rebates and fees that cost the company $110 million in the quarter. Excluding a $132 million restructuring charge for Lilly’s ongoing layoffs of 5,500 workers, the company would have earned $1.3 billion, or $1.18 per share, which represents a 4-percent decline in profit from the same quarter last year, when all special charges are excluded. On that basis, analysts were expecting profit of $1.17 per share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Revenue for the quarter totaled $6.3 billion, up 9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts expected only $6 billion in revenue.