West Pharma posts Street-beating Q3 earnings, sales

Shares in West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE:WST) rose today after the company beat expectations on Wall Street with its third quarter results.

The Exton, Penn.-based company posted profits of $51 million, or 69¢ per share, on sales of $398.2 million for the 3 months ended Sept. 30, for bottom-line growth of 36% on sales growth of 6% compared with the same period last year.

Adjusted to exclude 1-time items, earnings per share were 67¢, ahead of consensus on The Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $385.9 million.

“Our third-quarter performance was in line with our expectations,” president & CEO Eric Green said in prepared remarks.  “We are on track to finish 2017 with strong organic sales growth led by high-value product growth in the biologics and generics market units.

“Looking to the future, we continue to see positive fundamentals in the markets we serve.  We see unit volume growth from existing injectable drugs, future new drug approvals, and new generics and biosimilars that are entering the market.  There is continued growth potential for high-value product adoption in all our market units – pharma, generics and biologics – as customers strive for higher quality and increasingly adopt zero-defect strategic imperatives.  We have successfully focused our contract-manufactured product segment on serving injectable medicines and diagnostic customers, and our consumer goods business continues to become a smaller part of that segment’s sales.”

WST shares topped $100 apiece today for the first time this year, trading at $100.39 apiece in mid-morning activity, up 9.5%.

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