Pfizer shares plunge after cholesterol drug fails
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Shares in Pfizer Inc fell around 14 percent in European and pre-opening U.S. trade on Monday after the world’s biggest drugmaker scrapped development of its most important experimental medicine.
Pfizer halted work on torcetrapib, which was designed to raise levels of “good” HDL cholesterol, because of increased deaths and heart problems among patients given the product in a late-stage trial.
Torcetrapib had been expected to fill a gap left when the patent on Lipitor, the world’s biggest-selling drug with annual sales of $13 billion, expires in 2010 or 2011.
Its failure leaves Pfizer with a multibillion-dollar hole in its anticipated future revenue stream that the company will now have to try and fill by buying in other products.
“These guys were already on the acquisition trail for new products and new technologies but the scale of what they would consider might now change,” said Mike Ward, an analyst with Nomura Code Securities in London.
“Rather than the $1 billion to $4 billion range of acquisitions. which has been fairly consistent Pfizer policy for a while, there will now be speculation that it could be almost anything.”
Ward said Pfizer might consider buying companies such as Wyeth or Amgen Inc, which offer assets in vaccines and antibodies, two important new areas for the group.
Credit Suisse also said Pfizer should consider large acquisitions.
Pfizer shares fell more than 14 percent to $23.90 in electronic trading before the opening bell in New York, although the stock is still above its year low of $20.27.
The decision to scrap torcetrapib took investors by surprise, although there had been concerns that the drug caused elevations in blood pressure, itself a major risk of heart disease.
Just days ago, at a meeting with industry analysts and money managers, Pfizer executives pinned high hopes on torcetrapib and said they might seek U.S. approval for it next year.
“Short of Lipitor losing patent protection, the failure of torcetrapib is the biggest possible setback for Pfizer that could have happened,” Heather Brilliant, an analyst for Morningstar Inc, said at the weekend.
Also last week, Pfizer ended a joint development program with Akzo Nobel for schizophrenia drug asenapine.
RIVALS GAIN
For some of Pfizer’s rivals, however, the problems facing the New York-based giant are good news.
Industry analysts at Morgan Stanley said the failure of torcetrapib was an “important positive” for AstraZeneca Plc, since the product had been the biggest potential competitor to its fast-growing cholesterol drug Crestor.
After a shaky start, Crestor has established itself as an important driver of AstraZeneca sales and profits, thanks to clinical tests this year showing it can reverse the build-up of arterial plaque linked to heart attacks.
Worldwide sales of Crestor in the third quarter jumped 62 percent from a year earlier to $536 million.
AstraZeneca shares, which have been punished recently following setbacks for its own drugs in development, added around 1 percent in London.
Switzerland’s Roche Holding might also benefit among European pharmaceutical companies, since it is developing a rival to torcetrapib licensed from Japan Tobacco Inc in October 2004, although some investors are wary the problems with torcetrapib could turn out to be a class effect.
Roche stock traded unchanged after an early advance.
UBS noted Roche had not seen any increases in blood pressure, the most likely reason for the deaths linked to torcetrapib, in a phase II study of its R1658 compound.
Another potential winner from Pfizer’s woes is expected to be U.S. group Abbott Laboratories Inc, which is acquiring Kos Pharmaceuticals Inc Kos markets Niaspan, part of an older class of niacin medicines that also raise HDL.
Merck & Co Inc, meanwhile, is conducting trials of its own long-acting form of niacin, as well as of a separate drug that would be combined with it to prevent facial flushing—a side effect of niacin.
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