LONDON, Feb 10 (AFP) - The British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline on Thursday announced a nine percent drop in annual pretax profits which were hit by sales of generic drugs and a weaker dollar, but the group looked ahead to a strong 2005.
GlaxoSmithKline said pretax profit fell nine percent to 6.119 billion pounds (8.889 billion euros, 11.358 billion dollars) in 2004 when the weakness of the dollar was taken into account, compared with a year earlier. The figure was in line with analysts' consensus forecast.
Pre-tax profit rose two percent at constant exchange rates.
Turnover fell five percent to 20.359 billion pounds at fluctuating exchange rates, but rose one percent at constant rates.
"These results confirm the success with which GSK has navigated a difficult year, absorbing over 1.5 billion pounds of lost sales to generics and still managing to grow the business," chief executive JP Garnier said in a statement accompanying the results.
"The continuing success of our key products means we can now look forward to a good performance in 2005."
Shares in GlaxoSmithKline rose 0.73 percent to 1,241 pence in early afternoon London trading.
For the fourth quarter, pretax profit on a fluctuating exchange rate basis rose eight percent to 1.390 billion pounds, while turnover fell one percent to 5.333 billion pounds in the three months ending December 2004 compared with the same period a year earlier.
Glaxo meanwhile announced sharp falls in demand for its anti-depressants Paxil and Wellbutrin.
Sales of Paxil fell 39 percent to 1.1 billion pounds and revenue from Wellbutrin dropped 12 percent to 751 million as a result of cheaper versions of the drugs appearing on the market, it said.
But these were offset by a 19-percent rise in sales of its top-selling Seretide/Advair asthma treatment, to 2.5 billion pounds, making it the sixth-largest pharmaceutical product in the world.
In total, Glaxo said 12 of its products generated sales of more than 500 million pounds each last year.
New drugs were earmarked for launch during 2005, led by the overactive bladder treatment Vesicare, which went on sale in the United States last month.
The release of Glaxo's results came as peers suffered major setbacks due to tighter clinical controls.
Anglo-Swedish drugs giant AstraZeneca recently saw its blood-clotting agent Exanta rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its cancer drug Iressa withdrawn from the European market after studies showed it failed to improve survival rates.
On Thursday, Shire Pharmaceuticals saw its share price dive 10 percent to 577.5 pence in London amid safety concerns over its biggest selling drug, Adderall XR -- an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) treatment -- dealers said.
Shire announced that health authorities in Canada have requested suspension of sales of the drug following patient record analysis indicating incidence of "Sudden (cardiac) Death" in 14 children and six adults, and stroke in two children and 10 adults.
Asked if Glaxo could suffer similar setbacks, Garnier told reporters: "We're not going to say it could never happen to us, but we have the ability to absorb any potential problems because of our wide range of products."
He acknowledged that clinical trials and the monitoring of new drugs was getting tougher, but said Glaxo generally welcomed the harder stance.
"We're not against greater scrutiny, we just hope the FDA and others will strike a balance between the benefit of new drugs to patients and the known side-effects," he said.
02/10/2005 14:59 GMT - AFP