NEW YORK, Jan. 22 - Millennium Pharmaceuticals on Tuesday said that fourth-quarter losses widened as revenue fell and spending on new drug development increased.
Net loss for the quarter ended Dec. 31grew by 79 percent to $66.97 million, or 30 cents a share, from $37.49 million, or 18 cents, in the same period last year.
Revenue, meanwhile, slumped 7 percent to $54.6 million from $58.7 million year over year. Millennium blamed contracting milestone payments from partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.
The company posted a loss of $50.4 million, or 23 cents a share, from a loss of $15.6 million, or 7 cents, one year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial/First Call thought the company would post a loss of between 12 cents and 26 cents a share with an average estimate of 19 cents. The losses excluded amortization charges, debt conversion expenses, the cost of an accounting change, and deemed preferred-stock dividend, Millennium said.
Cambridge, Mass.-based Millennium, which like many former genomic tool and tech companies, has been flirting with a drug-developer model. Though it's aiming at robust clinical categories--inflammatory, metabolic, and cancer--it has not yet developed a single product.
But there are other ways of generating income while you wait for your product pipeline to bear fruit. In December, Millennium said it intends to acquire COR Therapeutics for roughly $2 billion explicitly for COR's anti-clotting product Integrilin.
Millennium reiterated its intention to exceed $400 million in total revenue in 2002.