RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Drug/life science giants IQVIA, Pfizer and Merck as well as Deutsche Bank are out with earnings updates.

The details:

  • IQVIA report

DURHAM – IQVIA Holdings Inc. (IQV) on Tuesday reported first-quarter earnings of $82 million.

The Durham, North Carolina-based company said it had net income of 42 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were $1.50 per share.

The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 10 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $1.48 per share.

The clinical testing company posted revenue of $2.75 billion in the period, which also beat Street forecasts. Nine analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $2.72 billion.

For the current quarter ending in July, IQVIA expects its per-share earnings to range from $1 to $1.09.

The company said it expects revenue in the range of $2.37 billion to $2.44 billion for the fiscal second quarter.

IQVIA expects full-year earnings in the range of $5.75 to $6.10 per share, with revenue ranging from $10.6 billion to $10.93 billion.

IQVIA shares have fallen 15% since the beginning of the year. The stock has declined 4% in the last 12 months.

  • The Merck report

KENILWORTH, New Jersey – The pandemic increased sales of Merck medicines during the first quarter as households around the world stocked up, but the drugmaker expects a significant hit this quarter as the full force of the outbreak lands.

Merck & Co. anticipates 2020 prescription drug sales will fall by $1.7 billion versus last year because the pandemic is keeping many patients with chronic conditions away from their doctors. The company expects sales of its veterinary medicines to dip by $400 million.

About two-thirds of Merck’s human medicine sales are for injected drugs administered by a doctor, from its blockbuster Keytruda cancer medicine and its portfolio of vaccines, to birth control implant Implanon and an anesthetic used in surgical procedures. The number of elective surgeries, which typically require anesthesia, is down about 70% recently as hospitals focus on treating COVID-19 patients and other people avoid hospitals, Merck executives noted Tuesday on a conference call to discuss their first-quarter results.

The maker of Januvia diabetes pills lowered its outlook for the year despite an 11% revenue jump and a profit increase of 10% in the most recent quarter.

Merck now expects full-year earnings per share of $5.17 to $5.37, excluding one-time items, down from its January forecast of $5.62 to $5.77 per share. The company now expects revenue of $46.1 billion to $48.1 billion, down from the January forecast for $48.8 billion to $50.3 billion.

That reduction led investors to sell off Merck shares, which were down $3.53, or 4.2 %, to $80.45 in early-morning trading as the broader markets rose.

The Kenilworth, New Jersey, drugmaker said its medicine factories and research labs have been operating normally, and it has six to 12 months of product inventory, so it doesn’t foresee shortages of its medicines.

The company is working alone and in multiple collaborations on finding potential antiviral drugs and vaccines, both areas where Merck has a long, successful history.

“Merck is doing everything in its power … to contribute to fighting the global pandemic today and also to prepare for the next one,” Chief Executive Kenneth Frazier told analysts.

Merck reported net income of $3.22 billion, or $1.26 per share, up from $2.92 billion, or $1.12 per share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings came to $1.50 per share, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings of $1.39 per share.

Revenue totaled $12.06 billion, up from $10.82 billion in 2019’s first quarter. Prescription drug sales totaled $10.66 billion, with $3.28 billion of that coming from Keytruda alone. Januvia and the combo Type 2 diabetes pill Janumet brought in a combined $1.28 billion, and the Gardasil vaccine against a cancer-causing sexually transmitted virus posted $1.1 billion in sales.

Veterinary medicine sales were $1.21 billion, up 18%.

Edward Jones analyst Ashtyn Evans wrote to investors that the first-quarter results were strong, but that sales likely won’t normalize until the fourth quarter, as people delay doctor visits, pet owners postpone veterinarian visits and declining protein consumption amid the global downturn hurt sales of livestock medicines.

“Overall, we believe long-term demand for Merck’s products is strong, and growth will be driven by innovation,” added Evans, who has a “Buy” rating on Merck shares.

Merck has been remaking itself by shedding some parts of the company to focus on its lucrative cancer drug business, veterinary medicines, vaccines and hospital medicines.

The company is spinning off of its women’s health segment, some older medicines and its business selling biosimilars, or near-copies of complex biologic drugs made inside living cells.

Merck said Tuesday it’s on track to complete that spinoff in the first half of 2021, and announced the new company will be called Organon & Co., the name of a business focused on medicines for women and psychiatric conditions that Merck acquired a decade ago.

  • The Pfizer report

NEW YORK – Drugmaker Pfizer said the COVID-19 pandemic will reduce its second-quarter sales, as quarantines around the world are reducing visits to doctors — by patients with chronic conditions, parents bringing in kids needing shots and the company’s sales representatives.

The world’s biggest prescription drugmaker already experienced lower drug revenue in the first quarter as sales of recently off-patent drugs like painkiller Lyrica dropped, but the company on Tuesday said that it is maintaining its 2020 profit forecast.

Pfizer Chief Financial Officer Frank D’Amelio said the company’s strong balance sheet, plus wiggle room from the $2 billion range in expected revenue for 2020, enabled the Viagra maker to keep its January financial forecast despite the pandemic and factors such as unfavorable currency exchange rates hurting revenue.

D’Amelio expects the U.S. health system to gradually recover from July through December.

The pandemic has been disrupting patient testing of many of Pfizer’s experimental drugs, but its manufacturing plants are running relatively normally, company executives said on a conference call with analysts to discuss first-quarter results.

The New York-based company’s researchers and collaborators are working on ways to fight the virus, from reviewing its existing antiviral medicines and other compounds to see if any might fight the virus, to initial testing of four potential vaccine candidates.

“In our efforts, the biggest hope is a vaccine,” Chief Executive Albert Bourla said in an interview.

Bourla expects data on those vaccines by late June, then will narrow testing to the best two options. If testing goes well and U.S. regulators authorize emergency use of one of those shots, he predicts Pfizer will have millions of doses available by year’s end. That could be too optimistic, given vaccines normally take many ears to develop.

Pfizer makes the world’s top-selling vaccine, Prevnar 13 for preventing pneumonia and related infections. It brought in $1.45 billion in the first quarter, 12% of the company’s $12.03 in total revenue. That was down 8% from $13.12 billion in 2019’s first quarter.

The maker of Xeljanz for rheumatoid arthritis reported net income of $3.4 billion, or 61 cents a share. That was down 12% from $3.88 billion, or 68 cents per share, a year earlier.

Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, came to 80 cents per share, easily topping the 71 cent-per-share average expected by analysts.

Pfizer Inc. said it still expects full-year 2020 earnings of $2.82 to $2.92 per share, on revenue of $48.5 billion to $50.5 billion.

  • Deutsche Bank

FRANKFURT, Germany — Deutsche Bank has reported that its net income fell to 66 million euros ($72 million) in the first quarter as the pandemic hurt its business. The bank said it was letting its financial buffers fall so it can maintain lending to clients but said the easing was temporary and modest.

the bank has a software and technology development center in Cary, NC.

The net profit fell from 201 million euros in the first quarter of last year, while revenue dropped to 6.4 billion euros from 6.35 billion euros. Money set aside to cover loans that are not being repaid grew to around 500 million euros from 140 million a year ago, one sign of business distress amid the shutdowns aimed at halting the spread of the virus.

It said its common equity tier 1 ratio, one measure of financial strength, fell to 12.8% from 13.6% at year end. But the bank said it would not restrict lending just to maintain its target for its capital cushion.

“Management has made the clear decision to allow capital to fall modestly and temporarily below its target in order to support clients and the broader economy at this time of economic crisis,” the company said in a statement. The bank said it was maintaining buffers well above regulatory requirements in any case.

The European Central Bank has eased capital requirements for banks during the pandemic to make it easier for them to keep lending. Bank lending is key to the European economy because companies tend to get their financing from banks as opposed to from bond or stock markets.

The bank released partial first quarter earnings in an email just before midnight Sunday