Pfizer cuts revenue forecast as supply snags, dollar strength weigh

(Reuters) - Pfizer Inc cut the top end of its yearly sales forecast, blaming a stronger dollar and lower revenue from its sterile-injections business, sending shares of the largest U.S. drugmaker down 3 percent on Tuesday.

Pfizer also missed Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue, hit by supply problems at its Essential Health unit that houses sterile injections as well as legacy medicines such as menopause drug Premarin.

Third-quarter sales from Essential Health fell 4.4 percent to $4.83 billion, hurt in part by competition from cheaper generic medicines in the United States.

Pfizer continues to "manage its way through" patent expiry challenges, Citi analyst Andrew Baum said on Tuesday, referring to looming competition from generic drugs.

But unlike previous quarters, sales from Pfizer's "growth-driving" drugs, including Ibrance and Xeljanz, fell short of Wall Street estimates, he added.

In the third quarter, Pfizer's cancer drug Ibrance had sales of $1.03 billion, missing estimates of $1.07 billion. Rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz also missed revenue estimates.

Pfizer, which named insider Albert Bourla to take over as CEO next year, now expects full-year revenue of between $53 billion and $53.7 billion, compared with an earlier forecast of $53 billion to $55 billion.

The drugmaker, which gets just over half of its revenue from outside the United States, said the strengthening of the dollar in relation to the euro and certain emerging market currencies hurt revenue projections.

The company also updated its 2018 adjusted earnings target to between $2.98 and $3.02 per share from $2.95 to $3.05 per share.

Excluding one-time items, Pfizer earned 78 cents per share, above analysts' average estimate of 75 cents, according to Refinitiv data.

Net income rose 45 percent to $4.11 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30, helped partly by a lower tax rate.

Overall revenue inched up nearly 1 percent to $13.30 billion, Analysts had expected $13.53 billion.

Pfizer shares were down 3.4 percent at $41.75 in premarket trade.

(Reporting by Tamara Mathias and Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar)