Many Ways to Feel Good About Wyeth

Wyeth (NYSE: WYE  ) kept a big earnings season for big pharmaceuticals going on Thursday when it announced its first-quarter earnings. The company reported a 12% increase in EPS on an 11% increase in net revenue when compared with its year-ago Q1. Wyeth's exceptional performance included double-digit gains in net revenue in its three main segments -- pharmaceuticals, consumer health care, and animal health.  

The primary soft spot I saw was the fact that net revenue for the company's top seller, the antidepressant Effexor, decreased by 6% on a year-over-year basis. This slip is understandable, given that Effexor and many of its name-brand counterparts have come under siege from generics in the U.S. and Canada. However, Wyeth was able to fire back with a 43% increase in sales of its No. 2 seller, Prevnar, a vaccine for infants. The company also rang up double-digit sales growth for six of its top 10-selling drugs.

In the past two weeks, Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY  ) , Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ  ) , and Schering-Plough (NYSE: SGP  ) have reported double-digit sales growth for their latest quarters. And Wyeth has put together a pretty impressive pipeline of products that could keep boosting its earnings.

It now has two drugs whose New Drug Applications (NDA) are under review by the Food and Drug Administration and a phase 3 drug that's on track to reach NDA status by the end of this year. Despite a 10% run-up in price to a new 52-week high this month, this stock still looks attractive to me.

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Fool contributor Billy Fisher owns shares of Johnson & Johnson. Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson are Income Investor selections. The Fool has a disclosure policy.