Schering-Plough Earnings Jump

Schering-Plough

reports that second- quarter earnings more than doubled on higher sales for its cholesterol drugs Vytorin and Zetia, despite new generic competition. Net income was $539 million, or 34 cents, up from $259 million, or 16 cents, a year ago, beating Wall Street estimates by 6 cents.

Revenue rose 14 percent to $3.2 billion. Scrips for Vytorin, which combines Zetia and Merck's Zocor, rose 20 percent over the last 12 months. While cheaper, generic copies of Zocor have been sold since June 2006, Bloomberg News notes that Vytorin sales have been boosted by a $128 million ad campaign citing how it fights cholesterol in two ways and by studies comparing it with other branded medicines.

5 Comments

Jul 23, 2007 - 11:53am

Pharmalot,

I guess that's what happens when a company is run by a senior management team that is willing to cheat in order to win. They were caught for doing some of the same things at Wyeth and Pharmacia, but they cash in and get out fast enough so they're not touched.

How long before they get caught this time? Carrie's already cashed out $43 million after the stock hit $30. More will cash out soon. They'll be out before the fines come down. Of course it really doesn't matter because the company and its' executive never admit any wrongdoing and the shareholder's pay the fines for their disgusting actions.

Jul 23, 2007 - 12:00pm

Pharmalot,

Oops! I forgot. I need to clarify that Espy is Schering-Plough.

"To the victors belong the spoils", but in this case the spoils may just be the fish rotting from the head down. Only time will tell if the governemnt and FDA have the guts to look..

Jul 23, 2007 - 12:32pm

It's amazing that Zetia/Vytorin has become a

Jul 23, 2007 - 12:33pm

hey! what the heck happened to the rest of my post??? It was quite pithy, if I do say so myself!

Jul 30, 2007 - 11:57am

It's easy to generate increasing profits when you'll do anything at all to do so, regardless of whether or not it's above-board and on the up-and-up.

Just like Barry Bonds has alledgedly done in baseball! When the other guys are doing better than you because they're doing something wrong, it's ok to do the same thing as long as you win!