Pfizer may unload its animal-health business, which employs more than 250 people in the Triangle.
The world's largest drug maker announced Thursday that it will consider a sale or spinoff 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. It sells vaccines and other products to prevent and treat diseases.
The business's poultry division employs about 250 people in Durham and 20 in Laurinburg. Some of those employees joined Pfizer in 2007 when it 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, Pfizer spokesman Rick Chambers said.
Pfizer also employs about 750 people at a human-vaccine plant in Sanford that it took over in 2009 when it bought Wyeth. The company is laying off hundreds of workers as it downsizes that plant through 2015.
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.
"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 Feb. 1 that he was reviewing each of the company's four business areas, including consumer health and established products, as the drug maker faces the loss of exclusivity of its biggest product, Lipitor.
In April, Pfizer announced the sale of its Capsugel capsule-making business to private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. 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 55 cents to close at $20.23 Thursday. The stock is up nearly 40 percent in the past year.
The Associated Press contributed to this report..
