Valeant posts rocketing sales and earnings for 2nd-qtr 2011

Acquisitive Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals International (TSX: VRX) announced second quarter financial results for 2011, with earnings up a whopping 64.7% to $56 million, or $0.17 a share and revenues of $609.4 million rocketing 155% compared $238.8 million in the like 2010 period, driven by strength in Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings per share of $0.66 on revenues of $606.7 million on average. Valeant is raising its previous cash EPS guidance to $2.70 to $3.00 in 2011, compared to prior guidance of $2.65 to $2.90.

“The second quarter once again demonstrated the strength of our diversified business model,” stated Michael Pearson, chairman and chief executive. “While the organic growth in our US operations faced a number of headwinds this quarter, such as a tough comparison to the second quarter of 2010 when Legacy Biovail product sales were at unusually high levels, coupled with lower than expected results delivered by partnered Legacy Biovail generic products, we still delivered solid pro forma organic growth. We remain confident that our full year pro forma organic growth should be approximately 8% due in part to the strong performance from our businesses in Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia. In addition, we are pleased to report that our cash flow from operations generation was particularly robust this quarter, demonstrating the solid execution of our business strategy,” he added.