The big drugmaker is dramatically stepping up sales efforts in emerging markets, overhauling US business operations and slashing more costs ahead of the 2011 patent loss for cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor, theAssociated Press informs us.
Ian Read, speaking at the 2008 UBS Global Life Sciences conference in New York, told analysts and investors Pfizer has reduced annual costs by $1.2 billion from 2006 levels and expects to meet its goal of cutting a total of $2 billion by year's end. But most of the remaining reductions will occur in the fourth quarter, possibly signaling more job cuts.
Pfizer hopes to generate another $3 billion in revenue by 2012 just from meds losing patent protection. How? Create new doses, tweak existing products and enter niche markets. For instance, Pfizer plans to seek approval for new uses for several drugs, including Celebrex and try to milk Lipitor sales in other countries. Same goes for Chantix, which will be launched in nine countries in the next nine months, including three with lots of smokers: Russia, China and Turkey.
Pfizer also is trying to boost sales of the Lyrica med for nerve pain, which is approved for fibromyalgia, with an ad campaign targeting patients. The affliction causes aches and stiffness in muscles and tendons, but some docs dismiss it as a phony condition, so marketing efforts aim to "legitimize fibromyalgia as a disease."
Another focus will be greatly increasing sales forces in emerging markets, particularly seven with the largest projected sales growth: Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and Turkey.
In the US, Pfizer will switch from having a sales force pitching individual drugs to doctors to having salespeople discuss a variety of Pfizer brands of according to each doctor's needs. The company also is creating regional business units, with a pilot program in five states
Source: Associated Press
6 Comments
The largest does not make you the most profitable, first of all.
Secondly, in my opinion, manipulating existing products is juvenile. Small carbon molecule medications have failed to impress for quite some time now with any typical pharmaceutical company. Red biotechnology, nanotechnology, et. al. is where they should go and focus on to remain admirable.
Pfizer will not be saved by selling Chantix in Kazakhstan!
Putting this drug on the international market may make sense to the "bean-counters", but doing so while knowing there are severe problems with this drug, does not. This drug is dangerous, we know it, now other countries are about to find out.
Of course, I am talking about Chantix.
Those who know Ian Read are fully aware of his limitations though I am not sure that those in the audience where he gave this presentation are familiar.
I do hope that investment professions aren't fooled into thinking that market leadership and growth of ibuprofen in Argentina is meaningful to the company as a whole, particularly in light of Lipitor's loss of exclusivity. I presume that anyone who knows that market knows just how that growth is attained. (Pfizer has long assumed what isn't reported up the line won't hurt them.)
Similarly, I assume that they are not fooled by the markets touted for their perceived value of brand names. Think about it, people. These countries may be developing, but they are not stupid. Follow the money...
Well that's a great game plan.
They can either take an off patent drug and "tweak" it so that the Lyricas will have insurers refusing to pay for them in leu of cheaper products without first testing to see if those cheaper products are sufficient enough. Or they can go the Dilantin route and "tweak" them down, get them approved by office of generics, and have insurers wanting people to go with better tested generics, not really knowing if a new formula is safe until post marketing, which for a generic is pretty much ignored.
Tweaking has been so successful thus far.