Bristol-Myers: 60 drugs in testing to boost sales

Executives at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. told analysts Thursday at a business briefing that the drugmaker has 60 potential drugs in development, seven in late-stage studies, and plenty of money for dealmaking.

"Five potential new medicines could be introduced in the next three years," said Dr. Elliot Sigal, head of research and development.

The company said it expects future revenue from many of those medicines and growing sales from existing drugs to help offset an expected plunge in Plavix sales in 2012. That's when U.S. generic competition will start slashing sales of the $6 billion-a-year blood thinner, the world's second-best-selling drug.

"With Plavix continuing to chug along, we have a mini-cash machine until its patent comes to an end," Chief Executive James M. Cornelius told the analysts.

Before that happens, the New York-based company is aiming to replace those revenues and maintain profits by getting multiple new drugs approved.

The five products likely to reach the market by 2012 are blood thinner apixaban, organ transplant drug belatacept, cancer drug brivanib, diabetes drug dapagliflozin and skin cancer drug ipilimumab.

Several approved drugs also are in late testing for additional uses. The company could file this year for approval for those uses, including a drug that combines Bristol's type 2 diabetes treatment Onglyza, approved Aug. 31, with the widely used, generic diabetes pill metformin.

Analysts at the meeting questioned executives about disappointing sales. Onglyza, which competes with Merck & Co.'s popular, well-established Januvia, brought in only $4 million in the fourth quarter, far below analysts' forecasts of $30 million to $91 million.

"While it may be a little slower than" initially anticipated, said Cornelius, "the product is a great product and has every hope of reaching" sales expectations.

Chief Operating Officer Lamberto Andreotti said Bristol-Myers has been able, despite increased competition, to increase sales of key existing products, including Plavix, Abilify for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and HIV drugs Reyataz and Sustiva.

Also Thursday, Bristol-Myers forecast its earnings per share would be at least $1.95 in 2013, which is seen as the first full year when generic competition will slash Plavix sales. The forecast was a little better than the $1.86 per share analysts expected, boosting Bristol shares by 14 cents to $24.47.

The business briefing is the first since December 2007, when Cornelius unveiled a strategy dubbed String of Pearls to divest noncore operations such as the Mead Johnson nutrition business and transform Bristol-Myers into a biopharmaceutical leader.

Cornelius told analysts that instead of further diversifying "the mini-conglomerate I inherited, we went the other way," and have now merged the best aspects of a pharmaceutical company with the agility of a biotech firm. Now it's a much leaner operation and ended last year with $10 billion in the bank, he said.

Andreotti said the company has now made its 10th deal under that strategy to acquire a biotech drug or business, with one announced Wednesday with Allergan. Bristol will pay it $40 million up front and potentially several hundred million dollars more for the rights to a drug to treat chronic pain caused by tissue damage.

On Tuesday, the company said Cornelius, who had run Bristol-Myers for 3 1/2 years, will retire in May but remain chairman of the company's board. Andreotti, 59, will succeed Cornelius.

Sigal, the research head, said the company's research efforts now are focused in five areas: cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and other immune conditions, heart and metabolic disease, viruses such as HIV and hepatitis, and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

He also said the company has been able to reduce drug development costs through strategies such as outsourcing much of its manufacturing and setting up research centers in India and other countries.