During the mids, Abbott Laboratories' hospital products division entered the electronic flow control market with the introduction of its first electronic drug delivery pump, the prototype of the electronic infusion pumps Hospira marketed when it made its debut as a separate company. In , the division introduced another innovation, a device for patient-controlled analgesia that enabled patients, for the first time, to control the administration of their pain medication.
The hospital products division added a new business interest the following year, acquiring Oxitmetrix, a company that manufactured high-technology monitoring systems for the management of critically ill patients. The acquisition marked the division's entry into the critical care business, another principal market for Hospira in the early 21st century.
Despite the disastrous intravenous solution debacle at the beginning of the s, the legacy inherited by Hospira generally lacked drama. From forward, Abbott Laboratories' hospital products division, relative to the company's other business interests, was a steady yet unprolific money winner. Drug development required vast cash investments, occasionally resulting in pharmaceutical products that rewarded the company with a revenue stream akin to a financial panacea.
Hospira's legacy within Abbott Laboratories exuded a character quite different from that of the pharmaceutical company's primary business. Abbott Laboratories' hospital products business never yielded big profits. The division was a slow and steady money machine, never risking nor gaining much financially. The division was reliable, but eventually the senior management at Abbott Laboratories decided to go for high-risk, high-yield businesses, a decision that meant the end of the company's association with its more staid business pursuits.
Hospira became the result, a division set free from the oversight of a company that had nurtured its development for seven decades. The timeline of events that led to Hospira's separation began in August , when Abbott Laboratories' senior executives announced their intention to focus on higher-risk, higher-reward operations that developed patented drugs and medical devices. To narrow its strategic focus, the company bundled its lower growth businesses into what was to become a separate company.
Although it lacked a name, the company was given a leader in August, a year veteran of Abbott Laboratories, Christopher B. Begley, who served as president of Abbott Laboratories' U. A Chicago native, Begley earned his undergraduate degree at Western Illinois University and a master's degree in business administration at Northern Illinois University.
As Begley prepared to take the helm of Abbott Laboratories' spun-off assets, the business press scrutinized the company he was set to inherit. The company's intravenous therapy products and its acute-care generic injectables a product of concerted expansion undertaken by Abbott Laboratories during the s generated the bulk of the new company's revenues.
While acknowledging the market leadership the company promised to enjoy once it was officially set free, critics pointed to the nature of the company's business, arguing that the reason Abbott Laboratories wanted to shed the assets did not augur a vibrant financial future for Begley's company. The sales collected by the company's two primary business areas were the definition of steady, derived from long-term contracts that provided a reliable stream of revenue. The businesses, however, were char- acterized as low-profit-margin enterprises that, historically, had suffered the ignobleness of being labeled as slow-growth ventures.
In the nine-month period spanning the August announcement and Hospira's official birth, the financial community anticipated the debut of a sizable entrant, waiting to see if Begley could inject vitality in a company that, on paper, fell short of sparking excitement on Wall Street. In the first week of May , Abbott Laboratories' hospital products business began a new era as Hospira.
Once the formalities were concluded, Begley addressed the industry pundits who characterized Hospira's business as being slow-growth in nature and yielding low profit margins--margins that were narrowing as the company's hospital customers banded together to buy in bulk, driving prices further down. Begley responded by pointing out that Hospira, as a separate company, would receive more attention and more investment than it had under the control of Abbott Laboratories, noting, in a May 3, interview with CEO Wire, that Hospira "has been an under-funded business as it relates to research and development.
In one example of the increase in research and development spending, Begley set his sights on more than 30 injectable drugs scheduled to lose their patent protection in the first few years of Hospira's existence. Before Hospira was spun off, Abbott Laboratories allocated funds to develop only four drugs whose patent expirations were pending.
Hospira's first year as an independent company produced both encouraging and discouraging results. During the company's first fiscal quarter as a publicly traded concern, investors were treated to an 86 percent jump in profits, but the reason for the gain enveloped Begley and his management team in controversy. The company discontinued medical and dental retirement benefits for nonunion U.
The allegations led to a class-action lawsuit filed against Abbott Laboratories and Hospira in the U. District Court in Chicago in November Hospira concluded its first year as an independent company with many questions about its financial vitality left unanswered. The company, Begley stressed, was only halfway through its projected month transition period in separating from Abbott Laboratories.
In , sales increased negligibly, rising 0. Looking ahead, Begley planned to continue to increase research and development spending and to increase the company's involvement in overseas business, where Hospira derived only 15 percent of its total volume.
Although Hospira was a company with a year legacy, in some ways the company was starting from scratch, working to create a profitable future for itself as an independent enterprise. Recognizing this, Begley broadly described the company's plans for the immediate future in a company press release dated March 2, We'll continue to take the steps necessary to advance our success--creating an independent infrastructure and increasing our research and development investment to drive future growth.
They were Clindamycin injection and Acetylcystine inhalation solution, and Voriconazole injection and Melphalan injection. Part of the reason Pfizer sold these assets is related to regulatory requirements over the Hospira acquisition. The generic acetylcysteine inhalation solutions, if it had been kept by Pfizer, would have cut the number of generic suppliers in the U. The clindamycin phosphate injection, an antibiotic for lung, skin, blood, bone, joint and gynecological infections, was marketed under several branded and generic labels that competed against each other.
After the Pfizer-Hospira merger, suppliers would have dropped from four to three. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of next year. As a result, Pfizer will own about We look forward to serving more customers as we continue to bring clinical and economic value to the marketplace.
0コメント