Remember Effient? The blood thinner that was once Eli Lilly and Co.’s greatest post-Zyprexa hope and then, after a slow launch, was dismissed as an abject failure? Well, it’s turning out to defy both predictions.
New York-based Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, said it isn’t interested in breaking up its animal health unit after Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. expressed interest in buying some of its products. Lilly’s Elanco Animal Health unit, which had $1.4 billion in sales last year, has been eager for acquisitions lately, buying up New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson’s European animal health assets early this year. Lilly Chief Financial Officer Derica Rice said Lilly would certainly take a look at Pfizer’s animal health assets, if Pfizer puts them up for sale. “We will watch how that situation evolves, and if there are some assets that become available that we are interested in, yes, we will pursue them,” Rice told investors and analysts on a conference call July 21. But later that same day, Pfizer spokeswoman Joan Campion told Bloomberg News that Pfizer would rather sell or spin off its animal health business as a whole, not in pieces. Pfizer’s animal health unit had sales last year of $3.5 billion.
It’s not yet clear how Express Scripts Inc.’s $29.1 billion deal to acquire rival Medco Health Solutions will affect the companies’ central Indiana operations—or their 800-plus employees at two facilities here. New Jersey-based Medco has 430 workers at a $140 million automated pharmacy and distribution center in Whitestown. It planned to ramp up Boone County employment to 1,300, but has fallen short of that goal after losing some large contracts. St. Louis-based Express Scripts, which acquired WellPoint Inc.’s pharmacy benefits subsidiary in 2009, said last year it had 400 employees at a specialty drug distribution facility near Indianapolis International Airport and planned to add 180 positions there by 2012. Medco announced last week that it lost an $11 billion contract with Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc., accounting for 17 percent of its business. The loss drops Medco to No. 3 in the industry, trailing Express Scripts and CVS CareMark Corp.
Eli Lilly and Co. posted better-than-expected second-quarter results and raised its 2011 profit forecast. The Indianapolis-based drugmaker earned $1.2 billion, or $1.07 per share, in the three months ended June 30, a decline of 11 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago. The declines were driven mainly by a 16-percent rise in sales and marketing expenses—used to help launch a new diabetes drug Tradjenta, which Lilly is co-marketing with Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH. Lilly also suffered increasing costs from the 2010 U.S. health care reform law, which mandated rebates and fees that cost the company $110 million in the quarter. Excluding a $132 million restructuring charge for Lilly’s ongoing layoffs of 5,500 workers, the company would have earned $1.3 billion, or $1.18 per share, which represents a 4-percent decline in profit from the same quarter last year, when all special charges are excluded. On that basis, analysts were expecting profit of $1.17 per share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Revenue for the quarter totaled $6.3 billion, up 9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts expected only $6 billion in revenue.
Former Eli Lilly and Co. vice president Richard Dimarchi, BioCrossroads President David Johnson, angel investor Oscar Moralez and Purdue University Senior Vice President Alan Rebar discuss issues ranging from the depth of the life sciences industry in Indiana to venture capital and Purdue’s Discovery Park.
An investment firm projects that the Elanco animal-health business will generate sales of nearly $2 billion by 2012 and surpass $3 billion by 2018.
The Precedent Cos.—the local developer of The Precedent Office Park, Mount Comfort Commercial Park and several upscale residential communities in Hamilton and Johnson counties—is winding down operations in an out-of-court restructuring.
This month, we recognize the power players who built this city, from the new airport to Lucas Oil Stadium to the Palladium.
The most successful black businessman in Indiana plans to retire from the company that bears his name at year-end as part of a transition that ultimately will put his daughter at the helm.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., overturned Friday a judge’s decision that Lilly’s patent on attention-deficit treatment Strattera was invalid.
Indiana’s Mitch Daniels has gone from considering a run for president to finishing out his second and last term as governor.
Warsaw-based Biomet Inc., which makes orthopedic implants, rolled out a restructuring plan in its knees and hips division that will trim 21 positions in the United States and another 60 to 80 in Europe, according to the Times-Union newspaper in Kosciusko County. Separately, Biomet said it will lay off an unspecified number of employees at its manufacturing plants in England and Wales. “The company believes these changes are necessary for it to meet the challenges it faces in the market today,” Biomet officials said in a statement given to the Times-Union. Orthopedic implant makers have been challenged in recent years because a settlement with the Department of Justice curtailed some of their marketing practices and because the economic downturn caused many patients to delay elective surgeries. Biomet, which is owned by a consortium of private equity firms, had 7,400 global employees as of March, with 1,700 of those in Indiana.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. won an appeals court ruling in its effort to block generic versions of attention-deficit treatment Strattera, according to Bloomberg News. On July 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., overturned a lower court judge’s decision that Lilly’s patent on the medicine was invalid. The Federal Circuit remanded the case to the lower court for further proceedings. The patent expires in 2017. Strattera generated sales of $577 million last year for Lilly. The company had won an order that prevented drugmakers including Mylan Inc. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. from entering the market with a generic version until this appeal was decided.
St. Vincent Health will match Indiana University Health in Fishers, turning its free-standing emergency room and outpatient center into a 40-bed inpatient hospital. The two facilities are a stone’s throw away from each other at the intersection of Olio Road and Interstate 69. The expansion will add 110,000 square feet to St. Vincent’s existing facility, which opened in 2008. It will include 30 medical/surgical beds and 10 medical observation beds, as well as 10 labor-delivery-recovery-postpartum rooms. The larger facility will create 200 jobs. Construction is set to begin in September and should be completed by December 2012.
An Indianapolis angel investment firm focused on life science startups has now expanded to Warsaw. StepStone Business Partners LLC also has chapters in Indianapolis and Anderson. Warsaw is home to three major orthopedic implant makers—Biomet, Zimmer Holdings Inc. and DePuy Orthopaedic Inc.—as well as more than 20 other suppliers, parts manufacturers and services firms that support the orthopedics industry. StepStone will be looking to fund new entrants to the industry cluster, companies that have gotten off the ground but that are not big enough to attract institutional investment. “These companies are very early-stage. They have minimum management teams. They basically have what they need and what they can afford,” said Oscar Moralez, managing partner and co-founder of StepStone. The group, which includes about 20 investors, has already invested in OrthoPediatrics Corp., a Warsaw-based firm that makes implants for children. Moralez envisions building a statewide angel network. He’s looking at adding two or three more chapters by mid-2012.
Indianapolis-based HealthNet has opened a satellite community health center on East 38th Street, in partnership with the Community Alliance of the Far Eastside and with a $200,000 gift from The Glick Fund. The new health center is expected to serve more than 2,000 patients a year, many living below the federal poverty level. The 1,300-square-foot health center has six exam rooms, a laboratory and office space. The center initially will offer only pediatric and OB/GYN services, but HealthNet plans to expand in a few months to add adult primary care and behavioral health care. The new health center is HealthNet’s ninth facility in Indianapolis.
The $156 million mixed-use development at Delaware and South streets in Indianapolis has a new name designed to reference both the project’s downtown locale and the urban “way of life” it will offer.
Check out a few more-detailed renderings of the newly named $156 million CityWay project at Delaware and South streets.
Rolls-Royce Group, one of the largest employers in Indianapolis, is studying sites in the United States and Germany for new engine test sites.
Stock prices of the dozen largest public companies in the Indianapolis area all tumbled Monday morning as a Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt spooked investors worldwide.
Four Hoosier companies attracted more than $10.5 million, down from 10 companies that attracted $18.5 million during the first half of 2010.
Stock prices hurtled lower Monday as anxiety overtook investors on the first trading day since Standard & Poor's downgraded American debt. Indiana stocks were part of the carnage.
Construction of the trail’s spur on Virginia Avenue was supposed to be finished by the end of July but now won’t be done until the end of the year. The unfinished work is causing headaches for Fountain Square business owners.
Licensed practical nurse Nic Davis invented a device to kill and prevent the introduction of microorganisms that collect at catheter ports.
In a promotion fit for the economy, United Way of Central Indiana will try to lure donors by offering them access to discounts from national and local retailers.
