Pfizer announced this morning that it may sell its animal-health business, which employs more than 250 people in the Triangle.
The world's largest drugmaker will consider a sale or spin-off of its animal-health and nutrition divisions to focus more resources on expanding its pharmaceutical business.
The New York corporation could pick different strategies for each division, and doesn't expect to make any more announcements until sometime in 2012. Any transaction could take up to two years to complete.
Pfizer faces increasing pressure from investors to divest some businesses and return more cash to shareholders.
The company's animal-health division had revenue of $3.6 billion last year. The business sells vaccines and other products to prevent and treat diseases in livestock and pets.
The poultry division employs about 250 people in Durham and 20 more in Laurinburg. Some of those employees joined Pfizer in 2007 when the company bought Embrex, a Durham company that sold vaccines and equipment to vaccinate chickens and turkeys.
The animal-health and nutrition businesses don't have other operations in North Carolina, said Pfizer spokesman Rick Chambers.
Pfizer also employs about 750 people at a human-vaccine plant in Sanford that it took over when it bought Wyeth in 2009.
Pfizer has retained JPMorgan Chase to help evaluate options for the animal-health business, and Morgan Stanley and Centerview Partners will advise on the nutrition business. That unit, which had 2010 revenue of $1.9 billion, sells food replacement and supplement products in more than 80 countries, including the Gold line of products for infants and children.
“Our decisions will continue to support our long-term strategy to allocate our resources, investments and people to the areas that best serve our patients and customers, and generate the best value for our shareholders,” CEO Ian Read said in a statement.
Read said on Feb. 1 that he was reviewing each of the company’s four business areas, including consumer health and established products, as the drugmaker faces the loss of exclusivity of its biggest product, the Lipitor cholesterol pill.
In April, Pfizer announced the sale of its Capsugel capsule-making business to private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Robert for $2.38 billion in cash.
Some analysts said that investors are disappointed that the company isn't trying to sell more of its operations.
“It doesn’t transform Pfizer, it only adjusts it,” Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor in Ann Arbor who studies the biomedical industry, told Bloomberg News. “Shedding the consumer business would have been more interesting.”
Pfizer shares fell 46 cents to $20.32 in midday trading. The stock is up about 40 percent in the past year.
The Associated Press contributed.
