Walgreen fiscal 1Q profit sinks nearly 26 pct

Walgreen's fiscal first-quarter earnings sank nearly 26 percent as costs tied to a couple big deals and Superstorm Sandy helped put a bigger-than-expected dent in the drugstore chain's performance.
CEO Greg Wasson told analysts he saw the quarter as a "turning point" for the Deerfield, Ill., company, which has been working to recapture customers it lost during a contract dispute with Express Scripts Holding Co. But investors didn't buy that message at least initially, as the stock fell deeper than broader market declines in Friday trading.
Walgreen Co. spent $4 billion in cash earlier this year to buy a stake in Alliance Boots, a Swiss company that runs the largest drugstore chain in the United Kingdom. It also spent $438 million on a drugstore chain focused on the mid-South under the USA Drug, Super D Drug and Med-X names.
Costs tied to those deals totaled $23 million in the quarter, and Walgreen said it only counted a small portion of the gains it received from Alliance Boots. It is reporting those gains a quarter after they occur to address audit and regulatory requirements.
The storm system that swept up the East Coast in late October also cost $24 million in the quarter, as it forced Walgreen to temporarily close hundreds of stores.
Overall, Walgreen earned $413 million, or 43 cents per share, in the three months that ended Nov. 30. That compares with net income of $554 million, or 63 cents per share, a year ago. Walgreen said earlier this month revenue fell nearly 5 percent to $17.34 billion.
Excluding one-time costs, adjusted earnings were 58 cents per share.
Analysts forecast, on average, earnings of 70 cents per share, according to FactSet.
Shares dropped 3.3 percent, or $1.24, to close at $36.31 Friday, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1 percent.
Walgreen runs more than 8,000 drugstores in all 50 states as the nation's largest drugstore chain. The company's revenue has slumped through 2012 after it started the year stuck in a contract squabble with Express Scripts, for which it fills prescriptions.
The companies had let a contract between them expire last December, and their new agreement didn't start until September. The split meant many Express Scripts customers migrated to new drugstores for their prescriptions.
Walgreen is trying to bring those customers back, but competitors like CVS Caremark Corp. and Rite Aid Corp. are pushing aggressively to keep them.
Walgreen said prescriptions filled at stores open at least a year fell nearly 5 percent in the quarter, a smaller decrease than the 8 percent drop it reported in the previous quarter. The drugstore chain saw that improvement as a sign that customers are returning.
"We think we can redeem significant portion of these customers over time," Wasson said.
Walgreen said prescription revenue from stores open at least a year fell 11.3 percent, while revenue from the front end, or rest of the store, dropped 2 percent. Revenue from stores open at least a year is considered a key indicator of retailer health because it excludes stores that recently opened or closed.
Generic drugs have squeezed revenue for Walgreen and other drugstores this year because they are cheaper than brand-name drugs. But they help profitability because they come with a wider margin between the cost for the pharmacy to purchase the drugs and the reimbursement it receives.
Walgreen launched a customer loyalty program called Balance Rewards during the quarter. It allows shoppers to gain points at both Walgreen and Duane Reade stores and for online purchases that translate into cash rewards they can then use at the stores.
Walgreen executives said the program will encourage customers to visit their stores more frequently and to buy more.
"We now have a new kind of currency in place that will help drive our front-end business," Wasson said.

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Nigeria's Dangote Cement expects 38 pct rise in Q1 profit

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's biggest listed company, Dangote Cement, expects pretax profit to rise 38.9 percent year-on-year to 42.09 billion naira in the first three months of next year, it said in a filing with the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Dangote Cement, Nigeria's biggest cement producer, said it expected turnover of around 81.6 billion naira in the first quarter, compared with 64.1 billion naira it achieved in the same period in 2012.
The company which is majority owned by billionaire tycoon Aliko Dangote earlier this month shut down a fifth of its production capacity because of a glut in the market caused by imported cement from Asia.

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Piano maker Steinway takes down "for sale" sign

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Steinway Musical Instruments Inc, the famous manufacturer of pianos, saxophones and trumpets, said on Wednesday it had decided not to sell itself following a 17-month-long exploration of strategic alternatives.
An American icon synonymous with handmade grand pianos, Steinway has struggled to keep its production margins competitive amid stagnant sales, and has seen its shares plunge 10 percent year-to-date. Still, its third-quarter earnings last month offered signs that cost-cutting was paying off.
In a statement on Wednesday, Steinway said it had received several non-binding indications of interest in buying the company, following talks with other companies in the sector as well as private equity, yet these did not offer more value than its own strategic plan.
"We will continue to focus management's efforts on execution of that plan and we look forward to a prosperous 2013," Steinway CEO Michael Sweeney said in the statement.
An in-principle agreement to sell its band instrument division to an investor group led by two of its board members, Dana Messina and John Stoner, was also scrapped in light of the current operating performance of the band division, Steinway said.
In July 2011, Messina, Stoner and other members of management made an offer for Steinway's band instrument and online music divisions, prompting the company to set up a special committee in order to assess it.
Later that month, Steinway asked investment bank Allen & Company LLC to a assist the special committee on exploring strategic alternatives that could also include selling the whole company outright to other interested parties.
By October 2011, Messina had stepped down as CEO of the company after 15 years at the helm to pursue his bid, yet he remained a board member. He was replaced by Sweeney, a chairman of the board of Star Tribune Media Holdings and a former president of Starbucks Coffee Company (UK) Ltd.
Steinway said on Wednesday that it was continuing a separate process to sell its leasehold interest in New York's Steinway Hall building, situated on Manhattan's 57th Street, and was in talks with several parties.
According to its website, Steinway & Sons, the company's piano unit, opened the first Steinway Hall on 14th Street in Manhattan in 1866.
With a main auditorium of 2,000 seats, it became New York City's artistic and cultural center, housing the New York Philharmonic until Carnegie Hall opened in 1891. These days, Steinway Hall is a showroom for the company's instruments.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company's pianos have been used by legendary artists such as Cole Porter and Sergei Rachmaninoff and by contemporary ones like Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang.

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Christian Orthodox believers celebrate Epiphany

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Thousands of young men leapt into icy rivers and lakes across eastern Europe on Sunday to retrieve crucifixes cast by priests in ceremonies commemorating the baptism of Jesus Christ.
By tradition, a wooden cross is cast into the water and it is believed that the person who retrieves it will be freed from evil spirits.
In the central Bulgarian city of Kalofer, 350 men in traditional dress waded into the icy Tundzha River with national flags. Led by the town's mayor and encouraged by a folk orchestra and homemade plum brandy, they danced and stomped in the rocky riverbed.
In the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta, some 3,000 Orthodox believers turned out to watch priests hurl three crosses into the icy sea. Dozens— some wearing diving suits— dived into the waters to retrieve the crosses.
"We the people are so like the sea," said Romanian Orthodox Archbishop Teodosie Tomitanul. "We hope that, as the sea has been calm until now this year, our souls will be just as calm."
Some Orthodox Christian churches, including those in Russia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, follow a different calendar, and Sunday was Christmas Eve, with Epiphany on Jan. 19.

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Spain's 'El Nino' lottery hands out $1.1 billion

A lottery showered €840 million ($1.1 billion) on ticket holders in five regions of Spain on Sunday, in the midst of a deep recession and high unemployment.
The "El Nino" (The Child) lottery is held each Feast of the Epiphany — Jan. 6 — and the top prize tickets were sold in Alicante, Leon, Madrid, Murcia and Tenerife. The lottery's name refers to the baby Jesus, who according to tradition was visited this day by three kings of Orient bearing gifts.
The lottery tickets cost €20 ($26), and the most one can win is €200,000 ($260,240). But there's a catch. Thanks to new austerity measures aimed at reviving Spain's ailing economy, anyone who wins above 2,500 euros ($3,250) in the lottery has to pay 20 percent income tax on their windfall.
On Sunday, a cheering crowd gathered outside one ticket office in the southwestern Madrid suburb of Alcorcon where 200 of the winning numbers were sold, totaling €40 million ($52 million) in prize money.
"I am very excited because I really needed this," said Josefina, one of three winners celebrating there. "Now that I've won, I just think I've been very lucky," said Josefina, who declined to give her surname.

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Northern Irish militants seen hijacking flag protests

BELFAST (Reuters) - Pro-British militant groups are instigating riots that have rocked the Northern Irish capital Belfast in the past month, a police officers' representative said on Sunday as officers came under attack again.
The violence stems from protests over the removal of the British flag over Belfast City Hall. It has been among the province's worst since a 1998 peace accord ended 30 years of conflict in which Catholic nationalists seeking union with Ireland fought British forces and mainly Protestant loyalists.
Fireworks, bottles and bricks were flung at officers for a fourth successive night on Sunday although a police spokeswoman said the trouble was not on the scale of the previous night, when police came under attack with petrol bombs and gunfire.
By Sunday, 70 people had been arrested, including a 38-year-old man detained on Saturday on suspicion of attempted murder over the shooting.
Police had said that members of pro-British militant groups helped to orchestrate and had taken part in the first wave of violence in early December. The Police Federation for Northern Ireland (PFNI) said the recent attacks showed this was now clearly the case.
"What it quite clearly demonstrates is the fact that paramilitaries have hijacked this flags protest issue and they have now turned their guns on the police," federation chairman Terry Spence told BBC radio.
"It is very clear that there are leading members of the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) who are exploiting this and are organising and orchestrating this violence against police officers who are out there trying to uphold the law and prevent anarchy on our streets."
Both the UVF and Northern Ireland's other main loyalist militant group, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, ceased hostilities in 2007 and decommissioned their stocks of weapons following the signing of the peace deal.
At least 3,600 people were killed in the 30 years of violence before the 1998 peace deal.
In scenes that recalled that earlier strife, pro-British loyalists began rioting in early December after a vote by mostly nationalist pro-Irish councillors to end the century-old tradition of flying Britain's Union flag from the city hall.
"NO STOMACH FOR THIS"
Analysts said that, although the violence was worrying, the small numbers of protesters indicated they might be unable to develop any strength.
"Clearly the violence is a step up in terms of what's happened more recently but they're simply not getting people out on the street," said Peter Shirlow, a professor at Queen's University who has spoken with protesters in recent days.
"Protestants are annoyed about the flag but they're even more annoyed about the violence. There's no stomach for this, that mass mobilisation is just not there anymore."
The police federation's Spence said, however, that it was the most challenging time for police in a decade. Church leaders and community workers held talks behind the scenes on Sunday to try to quell the violence.
Militant Irish nationalists, responsible for the killings of three police officers and two soldiers since an increase in tensions from 2009, have also not reacted violently to the flag protests, limiting any threat to the 15 years of peace.
The British-controlled province's first minister, Peter Robinson, said on Friday that rioters were playing into the hands of nationalist groups who would seek to exploit every opportunity "to further their terror aims".
The moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) party said on Sunday that shots had been fired using a ball-bearing gun at the house of one its councillors in Belfast, shattering windows.

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Drugs group Lundbeck's shares hit by profit warning

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Shares in Danish drugs firm Lundbeck fell to their lowest level in over 12 years on Wednesday after it cut its profits forecast for the next two years as European sales slow and spending on new products rise to combat generic competition.
The company has already warned that earnings would stall until 2015 due to cheap generic competition for its existing drugs, meaning new products will be vital for future earnings.
But Chief Executive Ulf Wiinberg said on Wednesday that the negative impact on revenue from healthcare reforms in Europe had also been bigger than expected in the last two years and that slowing European sales and generic competition were hurting.
As a result the company said operating profits would fall further than previously forecast in 2014 as it increases investments in its late-stage drugs development pipeline and product launches.
Lundbeck is working to find new drugs to replace lost revenue from products coming off patent protection such as its antidepressant Cipralex, which is sold as Lexapro in the United States and Japan, and Alzheimer's drug Ebixa.
Wiinberg said 2014 would be the company's peak investment year for the new products pipeline, offering it a solid foundation for growth starting in 2015.
"You only get one chance to launch a product and we have to do it well," Wiinberg said at a briefing for investors.
He was commenting after the company warned in a statement that it now expects revenue in 2014 of about 14 billion Danish crowns ($2.5 billion) and an operating profit of between just 0.5 billion and 1 billion crowns.
Analysts have on average been forecasting a profit of over 2.5 billion crowns for 2014 on turnover of over 14.7 billion crowns, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S Estimates.
Two years ago Lundbeck predicted its annual revenues over the period 2012-2014 would exceed 14 billion crowns a year while earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) would exceed 2 billion crowns a year.
Next years' revenue is now forecast to be in the range of 14.1 billion and 14.7 billion crowns to produce an operating profit of 1.6 billion to 2.1 billion crowns, with no change to the company's forecast for 2012.
Analysts' forecasts for this year are for operating profit to drop 41 percent to 1.99 billion crowns on revenue down 8 percent at 14.7 billion crowns, while for 2013 they predict a profit of 2.26 billion crowns on revenue of 14.5 billion crowns.
Lundbeck's shares were trading down 17 percent at 79.90 crowns at 12.44 p.m. British time, dropping below 80 crowns for the first time since April 2000.
"In the short term, earnings are under pressure," Sydbank analyst Soren Hansen said.
Lundbeck said that it expects a dividend payout ratio of about 35 percent of net profits in the 2012-14 period. Last year it paid 3.49 crowns on basic earnings per share of 11.64 crowns, a payout ratio of 30 percent.
Analysts have been predicting a 27-30 percent cut this year to 2.53-2.28 crowns, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data.
But a number of analysts doubt that revenue from new products will be enough to secure revenue growth in 2015, compensating for lost revenue from Cipralex, Lexapro and Ebixa which together accounted for about 70 percent of group revenue in 2011.
Lundbeck is working on new products such as antidepressant Brintellix in Europe and the United States for launch at the end of next year or start of 2014, as well as alcohol dependency treatment Selincro in Europe in mid 2013.
"It is difficult to see revenue from the smaller products compensating for the large products," said Hansen.

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