Boston Scientific 4Q net drops 17 pct.

Boston Scientific 4Q net drops 17 pct.

	Published : Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:19 By : Agencies Print this Story

BOSTON (AFX) - Boston Scientific Corp. on Thursday said its fourth quarter profit fell 17 percent on declining sales of the medical device maker's top-selling product, the Taxus drug-coated stent.

Natick-based Boston Scientific said its net income for the October-December period totaled $277 million, or 19 cents per share, compared with a profit of $334 million, or 40 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Per-share profit comparisons were clouded because Boston Scientific had 1.5 billion shares outstanding in the latest quarter compared with 830 million in the year-ago period, an increase resulting from Boston Scientific's $27 billion acquisition last April of Guidant Corp.

The Guidant deal helped boost Boston Scientific's sales to $2.065 billion from $1.54 billion in the year-ago quarter. The results for the latest quarter also were lifted by a one-time tax benefit of $133 million.

Excluding the tax benefit and such one-time items as stock compensation expenses, Boston Scientific's profit in the latest quarter equaled $306 million, or 20 cents per share, compared with a profit of $373 million, or 45 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

The results fell a penny short of the per-share profit estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Their consensus estimate was for a profit of 11 cents per share, including stock option compensation expenses, compared with Boston Scientific's profit of 10 cents per share on that basis.

Thursday's results were released about three weeks after Boston Scientific issued a preliminary fourth-quarter announcement, warning that sales of its Taxus stent fell nearly 12 percent compared with last year's third quarter.

Boston Scientific said sales of the Taxus stent will were about $506 million in the fourth quarter, down from the third quarter's $572 million, and down 17 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, when sales were $606 million.

After completing its acquisition of Guidant, Boston Scientific has struggled to overcome downturns in its two key heart device markets.

Drug-coated stent sales have fallen off amid recent concerns that the devices may put patients at slightly higher risk for blood clots than older bare-metal stents. And sales of the implanted defibrillators Boston Scientific acquired in the Guidant deal have been hurt by recalls and safety warnings for Guidant products.

For the full year, Boston Scientific reported a loss of $3.6 billion, or $2.81 per share, compared with a profit of $628 million, or 75 cents per share, in 2005. Most of the loss last year resulted from a $4.2 billion charge Boston Scientific recorded from the Guidant acquisition.