Teva Pharmaceutical second-quarter profit rises 5 percent on European sales

Monday, August 1st 2005, 9:59 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ Generic drug maker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. said Monday second-quarter profit rose 5 percent, as strong sales in Europe helped outweigh weaker sales in the United States amid fewer new drug launches.

The Israel-based company, which last week announced a planned acquisition of Ivax Corp. that will make it the world's largest generic drug company, reported earnings of $241.2 million, or 36 cents per American depository receipt, compared with $229.5 million, or 34 cents per ADR, in the prior-year period. Sales rose 4 percent to $1.23 billion.

The results matched Wall Street's mean estimate of 36 cents per share, the average view of 23 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, on projected revenue of $1.28 billion.

Teva said the sales increase was driven by all of its major operations except for the U.S., its biggest market, where generic operations were hurt by a small number of new product launches and increased competition facing some of its leading generic drugs.