Merck & Co., the second-largest U.S. drugmaker, plans to eliminate an additional 12,000 to 13,000 jobs by 2015, expanding a restructuring program to save as much as $4.6 billion a year.
As much as 14 percent of the company’s 91,000 employees will lose their jobs, based on the size of the workforce at the end of last month. The Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based drugmaker also reported today that second-quarter earnings excluding one-time items were 95 cents a share, matching the average estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Merck is cutting costs, expanding in emerging markets and spending on research and development as the company tries to gain momentum before it loses patent exclusivity next year on its Singulair medicine for asthma. The company just introduced a new hepatitis C drug, Victrelis, and is testing an experimental treatment to raise good cholesterol in a 30,000-patient trial.
“They are focusing on costs,” said David Maris, an analyst at CLSA in New York, in a telephone interview. “That is exactly what they need to do under the new environment we operate under.”
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