It seems to me that there are only two kinds of people who own stock in Wyeth (NYSE:WYE) right now: arbitrage investors with a complementary short on Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and those holding on because they want to be eventual Pfizer shareholders after the acquisition. The former could care less about quarterly reports and the latter, along with Pfizer's current shareholders, only need to concern themselves with the revenue situation, which will make up about a third of the combined company. Earnings are pretty meaningless at this point, since Pfizer claims it'll be able to make $4 billion in cost savings after the integration.
It was a mixed bag at the top of Wyeth's profit/loss statement this quarter: Revenue decreased 6%, but would have been up 2% if currencies had remained the same. Last year Wyeth's heartburn treatment, Protonix, was hit hard with generic competition from Teva Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:TEVA), and this year it was Wyeth's lead product, anti-depressant Effexor, that ran into international generic competition, sending sales down 20% year over year. Revenue from Wyeth's share of anti-inflammatory Enbrel, which it markets with Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) in the U.S. and Canada, also saw double-digit declines in revenue. The 26% U.S.-Canadian decrease was substantially lower than what was seen with other competing anti-inflammatory drugs: Abbott Labs (NYSE:ABT) posted a 2% increase for U.S. sales of Humira and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) saw a 9% gain in U.S. sales of its competing treatment, Remicade.
Pfizer wants to buy Wyeth partly for its biologics capabilities. While Enbrel didn't perform all that well in the U.S., where consumers might be cutting back because of lost insurance or high co-pays, international sales looked good -- up 23% at constant currencies. Another star biologic, Prevnar, a childhood vaccine for pneumococcal bacteria, saw sales jump 19% at constant currencies.
The take-home message for current and future Pfizer shareholders is that they're not getting a growth monster, but Wyeth's revenue is fairly stable. If Pfizer can make the integration happen smoothly, shareholders should benefit from Pfizer's deployment of capital. But that's a big if.
Fool contributor Brian Orelli, Ph.D., doesn't own shares of any company mentioned in this article. Johnson & Johnson is a selection of the Income Investor newsletter. The Fool has a disclosure policy.
