Drugmaker Mylan's profit rises 6%; sets no timeline on strategic options

Mylan NV beat analysts' estimates for third-quarter profit on Monday, as the generic drugmaker reported higher sales of its products in emerging markets and said it had not set any timeline on evaluating its strategic alternatives.

The company's shares rose 6 percent to $33.59 in after-market trading.

The EpiPen maker in August had set up a committee to review possible strategic alternatives, citing a tough US environment for generic drugmakers.

"I can assure you the board is busy looking at lots of things... But we put no timeframes around that," Chief Executive Officer Heather Bresch said on a post-earnings call.

US generic drugmakers such as Mylan and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd have suffered over the past few years as a steep fall in generic prices weighed on their bottom lines.

However, Bresch on Monday said Mylan was seeing continued stabilization of the pricing environment.

The company said on Monday the US Food and Drug Administration was in the final stage of reviewing the label of its generic version of GlaxoSmithKline Plc's blockbuster asthma treatment Advair.

Winning approval would help assuage concerns about Mylan's ability to execute on its complex generic pipeline portfolio, after it had twice failed to get FDA backing for Advair's generic version.

"We continue to believe (the FDA) will be able to resolve outstanding issues very soon," Mylan President Rajiv Malik said.

EpiPen revenue has declined over the last year on stiff competition, the launch of the company's own cheaper generic and higher rebates that it has had to pay as a result of a settlement for overcharging the US government.

Sales from the company's 'rest of the world' unit, which caters to markets including China and Australia, rose 4 percent to $773.7 million in the reported quarter, boosted by its anti-retroviral therapy franchise.

Revenue from the North America unit, its biggest, fell 13.6 percent to $1.01 billion, mainly due to lower sales volumes of EpiPens and other products.

The company, which reaffirmed its full-year 2018 revenue and profit forecasts on Monday, said net earnings doubled to $176.7 million, or 34 cents per share, in the quarter ended Sept. 30.

On an adjusted basis, the company earned $1.25 per share.

Total revenue fell 4 percent to $2.86 billion.

Analysts had expected the company to earn $1.19 per share on revenue of $2.91 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.