NEW YORK (AP) – Reduced spending on overhead and legal costs helped drugmaker Pfizer Inc. end a difficult year with a fourth-quarter profit, after a loss a year ago, and the company forecast slightly higher revenue and profit for 2017.
The biggest drugmaker based in the U.S. still misse d the profit expectations of Wall Street, but it edged past revenue expectations.
The maker of Viagra and pain treatment Lyrica on Tuesday reported net income of $775 million, versus a loss of $172 million a year ago.
Profit was 13 cents per share or, adjusted for non-recurring costs, 47 cents per share. The average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 50 cents per share.
Revenue totaled $13.63 billion in the period, while analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $13.55 billion.
Pfizer, based in New York, said it expects full-year earnings in the range of $2.50 to $2.60 per share, with revenue in the range of $52 billion to $54 billion.
For all of 2016, Pfizer reported net income of $7.2 billion, or $1.17 per share, on revenue of $52.8 billion.
Pfizer was blocked last year by the Obama administration in its attempt to acquire the Irish drugmaker Allergan in a tax maneuver that would have put its headquarters, at least on paper, in Dublin. It also scrapped development of a high-priced new cholesterol drug once viewed as a big seller, as sales expectations dropped amid increasing pressure for lower prices from insurers and prescription benefit managers.
Shares slipped more than 1 percent before the opening bell Tuesday, and have declined almost 4 percent since the beginning of the year.
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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research.