Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc. Q4 Earnings Beat The Street, Forecast In-Line

Written by StockNews.com

Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc. (NYSE: VRX) early Tuesday [Feb 28, 2017 | 7:08am] posted better than expected fourth quarter earnings results and offered an in-line outlook for 2017, as it redoubles its efforts to stem the tide of negative sales growth.

The Canadian pharmaceuticals and medical devices giant reported Q4 EPS of $1.26, which was $0.06 better than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $1.20.

Revenues plunged 12.9% from last year to $2.4 billion, but still topped analysts’ view for $2.34 billion. Valeant said the sales drop was mainly due to lower product revenues from existing businesses, with foreign currency translation effects also hampering numbers a bit.

Net cash from operating activities in Q4 was $513 million, down 14% from $598 million in the year-ago period.

Looking ahead, VRX forecast full-year 2017 revenues to range from $8.9 to $9.1 billion, which is in-line with Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $9.01 billion.

The company commented on its efforts to stem the negative sales tide via press release:

“Over the past few months, our teams worked to stabilize and strengthen our core businesses, resolve legacy issues, improve operational processes, launch new products, and improve the balance sheet and capital structure. We paid all 2017 amortizations and reduced debt by $519 million in the fourth quarter. We agreed to divest a number of assets, including several skincare brands, our Dendreon business and smaller international interests. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved our new psoriasis treatment, SILIQ, and we resubmitted our glaucoma treatment, latanoprostene bunod in February 2017.

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With our Walgreens fulfillment arrangement, we continue to see improvements in average sales prices (ASP) that are encouraging to us. We have worked to stabilize our sales force, while also expanding it to include primary care physicians to help us reach patients whose lives we believe can be improved with our healthcare products. We are pleased to report that the remediation at the Bausch + Lomb manufacturing site in Tampa was recently completed. Now, more than ever, we believe that with the right people, products and processes in place, we are well poised for a turnaround in 2017; we have a lot to look forward to and are excited about the future.”

...Year-to-date, VRX has gained 15.08%, versus a 6.08% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

VRX currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of D (Sell), and is ranked #80 of 132 stocks in the Medical – Pharmaceuticals category.