Source:
BloombergsPfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, said it plans to lower costs by closing plants and reducing research spending by as much as $3 billion, as the company decreased its sales forecast for 2012.
Research and development spending will be $6.5 billion to $7 billion in 2012, the New York-based company said in a statement today. Pfizer said it plans to buy back as much as $5 billion in shares next year and reported fourth-quarter profit that exceeded analyst estimates by 1 cent. Next year’s sales will be as much as $6.77 billion, compared with a previous forecast of as much as $6.85 billion, the company said.
This is the first earnings reported by Chief Executive Officer Ian Read, who replaced Jeffrey Kindler in December. Read is counting on products from the $68 billion Wyeth acquisition in 2009 to overcome sales lost to generic copies of Lipitor, the world’s best-selling drug. Lipitor’s patent ended in Canada and Spain and it will lose protection in the U.S. in November.
“The key messages are more buybacks, less R&D,” said Tony Butler, an analyst at Barclays Capital in New York, in a telephone interview. “This is all good. You could argue that the money has not been spent terribly well.”
Read more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/pfizer-fourth-quarter-net-topss-analyst-estimates-shares-fall-on-outlook.html
There's such a disconnect between the business and political news. The pols keep saying that giving tax cuts to businesses will create jobs while at the exact same time the businesses are saying they're going to give all their extra money to shareholders.
There's STILL TIME to stop the corporate tax cuts since we OBVIOUSLY are going to get NOTHING for them!
Why throw money down a rathole?