Here's what Reuter's said on Friday:
Friday April 17, 3:28 pm Eastern Time
Pfizer, Lilly, Warner-Lambert up, key drugs entice
NEW YORK, April 17 (Reuters) - Shares of Warner-Lambert Co (WLA - news), Pfizer Inc (PFE - news), and Eli Lilly and Co
(LLY - news) bounded higher Friday on mounting enthusiasm for a key new drug in each of their portfolios.
Warner-Lambert leaped 7 to 175-13/16 in afternoon trade on new monthly prescription data showing ever-growing market share
for its anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor, analysts said.
Pfizer was up 4-3/8 to 104-15/16 ahead of release on Monday of initial weekly sales data for its new impotence drug, Viagra,
which some analysts predict will become the biggest selling drug ever.
Lilly gained 4-1/4 to 67-1/4 on optimism the Indianapolis drugmaker will release clinical data in coming weeks showing its
osteoporosis drug, Evista, helps reduce the chance of breast cancer, analysts said.
Cowen & Co analyst Ian Sanderson said data released Thursday by IMS America, which tracks prescription trends, showed
Warner-Lambert's Lipitor held a 30.6 percent market share of cholesterol drugs sold in the United States in March.
''The IMS data show an acceleration in Lipitor's market-share growth,'' Sanderson said, adding the year-old compound had a 29.5
percent share in February.
''I used to think Lipitor would peak at 30 percent share, but it looks like it may still have room to move higher,'' Sanderson said.
He said Lipitor had sales of $865 million in 1997, the year of its launch, and would likely garner revenues of $2.4 billion in 1998.
Even if the drug's market share levels off, he said Lipitor sales are destined to grow sharply because sales for newer cholesterol
drugs in its class -- the so-called ''statin'' family -- continue to grow 25 to 30 percent each year.
But Lipitor's success has cut into market share of Merck and Co's (MRK - news) blockbuster statin, Zocor, which declined in
March to 25.1 percent from 25.4 percent the prior month, Sanderson said.
Deliveries to pharmacies of of Pfizer's Viagra began earlier this month. The first official weekly tally of sales is expected Monday
when IMS America releases its report of U.S. weekly new prescription data for the week of April 10.
New Jersey independent drug analyst Hemant Shah said he believes initial Viagra sales will be staggering, based upon information
he has obtained from other sources.
''It looks like sales of Viagra in its first few days on the market will be 25 to 30 times what Lipitor's numbers were when it was
launched last year,'' Shah said, referring to initial sales of the enormously successful new cholesterol drug.
Shah said prescription drug sales data provided him by Source Informatics of Phoenix, Ariz., indicated between 15,000 and 20,000
new prescriptions of Viagra are being written each day.
''That's an unbelievable number,'' Shah said, comparing it to 5,000 daily new prescriptions written for Eli Lilly's blockbuster
antidepressant Prozac. |
