Pfizer posts big 2Q profit amid deals

Pfizer is spinning off a big chunk of the company, culminating a rare tear of major deals aimed at reshaping the drugmaker into a slimmed-down version with faster, more-sustainable growth.

The biggest U.S.-based drugmaker announced the latest move on Monday — combining its Upjohn business, which sells off-patent former blockbuster drugs, with generic drugmaker Mylan into a new company to be created next year — as it reported a 30% jump in second-quarter profits.

“These are deliberate steps that we are taking to make Pfizer a very different company,” new Chief Executive Dr. Albert Bourla told analysts during a conference call to discuss the Mylan deal and the latest financial results.

Among the steps since Bourla took the helm in January are the just-completed acquisition of biotech company Therachon Holding AG, to gain an experimental drug that could be the first treatment for a type of dwarfism called achondroplasia; the pending $11.4 billion acquisition of Array BioPharma Inc., which sells two melanoma drugs and is developing additional medicines for cancer and other conditions with limited treatments; and the Aug. 1 start of a joint venture combining Pfizer’s consumer health products with those of British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc.

Pfizer just created the Upjohn business at the beginning of this year, by peeling off carefully selected off-patent drugs that were part of Pfizer’s established products division. Upjohn now sells many of Pfizer’s greatest hits: Viagra, painkillers Celebrex and Lyrica, Norvasc for high blood pressure, Effexor for severe heartburn, Xanax for anxiety and Zoloft for depression.