Oops....Merck Fails to Meet Wall Street Expectations
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The New York Times reports today that Merck’s profit forecasts for this year and next fell a penny short of Wall Street expectations sending its shares lower. Ah, what a difference a penny can make!
The company’s stock price has risen, trading in recent days near its 52-week high of $60.49 after it announced less than one month ago it would pay $4.85 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits stemming from its painkiller Vioxx, which it withdrew from the market in 2004.
Merck said that while it expected higher sales of its cervical cancer-fighting vaccine Gardasil, its diabetes treatment Januvia and its allergy treatment Singulair next year, generic competition would drive down sales of another top seller, Fosamax, an osteoporosis treatment.
Aside from Vioxx debacle, Merck has been on somewhat of a roll for the past three years. It was able to bolster its stock price during this time by instituting a cost-cutting plan that included draconian-like job cuts in 2005. Merck, which has already cut about 6,000 jobs under the plan, said yesterday that it would reach its target of eliminating 7,000 positions by the end of 2008.
This coupled with the recent layoffs at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, Johnson and Johnson suggest that now is not a good time to be looking for pharmaceutical or biotechnology jobs in New Jersey.
Until next time….
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!
