Schering earnings per share to fall 3%-6%

SCHERING, the world’s biggest maker of birth-control pills, said full-year earnings per share will fall 3% to 6% after reporting a profit in the third quarter as more people used its Betaseron multiple sclerosis treatment and Yasmin birth-control pill.

Third-quarter net income was €97 million, or 50c a share, compared with a loss of €73 million, or 37c, a year ago when the company had acquisition costs, Berlin-based Schering said in documents released before a press conference. Sales were unchanged at €1.2 billion.

The company “probably” won’t match last year’s fourth-quarter profit, chief executive officer Hubertus Erlen said in the text of a speech to be delivered at a press conference.

Schering’s outlook for 2003 earnings per share includes the euro’s gain against other currencies and excludes one-time items from the company’s sale of a stake in Aventis CropScience.

Schering is counting on Betaseron and Yasmin sales to help restore earnings growth after operating profit fell 6% in the first half.

The company previously announced plans to cut 300 jobs in Germany and 130 jobs in Finland after the euro’s gain against the dollar, competition from generic drugs and German health-care cuts hurt profit.

“At the moment the pharma industry is struggling in a difficult political environment,” Erlen said at the press conference. “Generic competition is stronger in many markets, and the exchange rates have caused us difficulties in the last few months.”

Profit dropped 10% to €127 million in the first quarter and 70% to €123 million in the second quarter after Schering booked gains from the sale of its stake in Aventis CropScience a year earlier. Sales fell 7% to €1.16 billion in the first quarter and 9% to €1.18 billion in the second quarter.

The euro was worth 18% more against the dollar on the last day of this year’s third quarter than it was a year earlier, which lowers the value in euro of the 23% of sales Schering gets in the US.

The company’s shares have gained 7.3% since October 10, when General Electric Co said it agreed to buy Amersham plc, the top maker of diagnostic chemicals, for $9.5 billion.

Schering is the leading maker of solutions for magnetic resonance imaging scans, and got 27% of first-half sales from products used in medical tests.

The stock has fallen 12% in the past year, ranking Schering 15th among 21 drugmaker stocks in the Bloomberg Europe Pharmaceuticals Index.

Schering is developing the cancer drug Leukine to treat Crohn’s disease.