One of the best things that an individual investor can do is to remain agnostic with respect to the many and varied industries on Wall Street. In other words, invest where the growth and value are and forget this notion of "must have" industries in your portfolio. For instance, you don't have to own overpriced medical device stocks or underwhelming pharmaceutical stocks, particularly when there are some good generic companies out there.
Barr Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: BRL ) could be one such candidate. In this leading generic company's fiscal first quarter, sales rose almost 27% as strong growth in alliance revenue offset some declines in proprietary drugs. In the company's core generics business, sales rose 15% as new products such as generic desmopressin counterbalanced a slight decline in the company's broad suite of oral contraceptives.
Generic drugs are often plenty profitable, but Barr's new alliance royalties and fees helped boost profits further. Operating margin in the quarter grew more than 700 basis points, helping to fuel a 60% rise in earnings. Speaking of those alliance and development revenues, the company posted a total of $44 million in the quarter (versus $1.5 million a year ago) as profits rolled in from agreements with Teva (Nasdaq: TEVA ) and KOSPharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: KOSP ) .
Although Barr has a pretty good history of internal R&D efforts, which have led to 31 Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDA) on file with the FDA, the company has also been a serial acquirer of companies and products, and that trend continued in this quarter.
Earlier in October, the company announced a deal to buy the ParaGard IUD product for $282 million. While this isn't a cheap price (five times sales), it's the only non-hormonal IUD on the market, and generic competition would be difficult. There should be meaningful potential for Barr's women's health sales efforts to boost sales growth of the product.
Certainly generics companies like Barr have their risks -- product development, acquisitions, and patent challenges all cost money and success isn't guaranteed. Still, Barr has a good track record of success in all of those fields. Of course, Fools must do their own due diligence and decide for themselves whether today's price offers enough margin of safety for a sound investment.
More Fool-brand takes on generics:
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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).
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