Profits of Lilly dropped 39% due to expiration of best-selling drug patents

Source: on the evening of July 24, 2014, China Securities Network reported that Eli Lilly's profit in the second quarter fell 39% due to the expiration of patents on some of the best-selling drugs At the beginning of the year, Lilly froze most employees' salaries due to the loss of patent protection in the United States of America of the popular antidepressant Cymbalta and osteoporosis treatment drug Evista, as well as the increasingly fierce competition from generic manufacturers Lilly said the expiration of patents on the two drugs caused its drug sales to fall 17% in the quarter Sales fell 73% to $401.3 million Evista's sales fell 61% to $108.3 million This brought the company's total U.S revenue down 30% John C Lechleiter, chief executive of Lilly, said: "the recent expiration of the patent triggered a significant decline in the company's second quarter revenue and profits At the same time, with the approval of new drugs coming soon, we are confident that Lilly will continue to grow in the next few years " This month, Lilly signed a $45 million drug development agreement with immunocore, a British biotech company, marking a scramble by major pharmaceutical companies to buy assets in the hot area of immunotherapy Immunocore is developing experimental cancer drugs to better manage the body's T cells T cells are white blood cells that attack foreign substances to kill diseased cells Lilly's agreement with Lilly focuses on early stage treatment In the second quarter, Lilly's profit was $733.5 million, or 68 cents a share, compared with $1.21 billion, or $1.11 a share, in the same period last year Excluding special items, earnings per share fell to 68 cents from $1.16 last year Revenue fell 17% to $4.94 billion Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect Lilly to make $4.88 billion in revenue and 65 cents a share