Icn Pharmaceuticals

Costa Mesa drug maker ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Wednesday it acquired Swiss pharmaceutical company Solco Basel AG. Financial terms weren't disclosed. ICN said privately held Solco, which sells dermatology, skin-care, wound-healing and ophthalmology products in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, had sales of $28 million in 1999. Last year, ICN earned $118.6 million, or $1.45 a diluted share, on revenue of $747.4 million. ICN's stock rose 13 cents a share to $28.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. on Thursday reported a fourth-quarter loss versus a year-earlier profit as it took charges to consolidate after years of geographic expansion spearheaded by retired founder Milan Panic. ICN, based in Costa Mesa, had a loss of $100.7 million, or $1.20 a share, compared with a profit of $33.5 million, or 40 cents a share, a year ago. Excluding one-time items, ICN reported a profit of 11 cents a share for the latest quarter. Wall Street analysts on average had expected a profit of 10 cents, according to Thomson First Call.

Drug maker ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Tuesday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the company's antifungal medicine Nystatin. Nystatin is a fungal antibiotic that is used as the active ingredient in a number of prescription anti-fungal medicines. It can be delivered orally, by suppository, or in cream or powder form. FDA approval brings the latest ICN medicine, made in the Czech Republic, into a competitive U.S.

Schering-Plough Corp. said Thursday that U.S. regulators agreed to let it sell the antiviral drug Rebetol as an individual treatment for the liver disease hepatitis C, a decision long awaited by patients seeking a more effective way to use the medicine. Rebetol capsules, which are made by ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Costa Mesa, have been available only in a combination package with a Schering-Plough injectable interferon drug.

The Costa Mesa, Calif., drug maker was accused Friday, in a shareholder lawsuit, of fraudulently inflating its stock price. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by a New Jersey investor, follows disclosures that ICN is the subject of three federal investigations, including one by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. An attorney for ICN declined comment on the suit. ICN's drug Virazole is being tested as a possible AIDS medication.

Costa Mesa drug maker ICN Pharmaceuticals said Monday its directors boosted the quarterly dividend to 7 cents a share from 6 cents, payable April 28 to shareholders of record April 14. The company posted a fourth-quarter loss of $218 million as it wrote off a Yugoslavian plant seized by Serbian troops. But other regions are performing well, and the company believes its drug ribavirin has a bright future as a hepatitis treatment. Last year, Schering-Plough Corp. won U.S.

The Costa Mesa drug research company said Thursday that its ribavirin drug will be tested on 21 AIDS victims at New York Hospital. The drug is used in fighting the virus believed to cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The company said it also is awaiting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use of ribavirin in treating respiratory syncytial virus, a disease affecting about 800,000 infants, children and elderly annually in the United States.

Buoyed by the success of its link to an Eastern European pharmaceutical company, ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Monday it earned $5.9 million, equal to 40 cents per share, last year after a 1990 loss of $22.4 million, or $1.92 a share. Sales for the drug manufacturer rose to a record $460.4 million for the year, contrasted with $272 million last year.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., citing economic turmoil in Russia and Eastern Europe, posted a wider-than-expected loss for the third quarter. The Costa Mesa-based drug company said it lost $65 million, or 89 cents a share, compared with a profit of $34.6 million, or 61 cents a share, for the comparable period last year. Revenue fell nearly 9% to $163.0 million from $177.4 million. The company reported a pretax loss of $75 million for the recent quarter in Eastern Europe.

Benefiting from higher sales and the repurchase of corporate debt, ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. reported net income of $7 million for the fiscal third quarter ended Aug. 31. It had a $756,000 profit for the same period a year ago. Third-quarter sales for the Costa Mesa firm were $41.7 million, up 31% from $31.9 million for the third quarter of fiscal 1987. For the first nine months of fiscal 1988, ICN posted net income of $17.2 million, up from $4.5 million during the same period in fiscal 1987.

Roche Holding moved Monday to boost flat sales at its flagship drugs business and strengthen its hepatitis C franchise by licensing a promising drug from Costa Mesa-based ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. Acting on its plan to tap rivals' products to fill gaps in its near-term development pipeline, Roche said it bought the rights to levovirin, an experimental drug for treating the viral infection that afflicts about 170 million people.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s international unit filed initial stock offering documents in London and Budapest, part of the Costa Mesa drug maker's plan to split the company into three publicly traded entities. ICN plans to sell up to 40% of the ICN International unit in an initial public offering scheduled for the second quarter. ICN International is being reorganized to include ICN's operations in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia, Africa and Australia.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., revising its plan to split its business into three separate publicly traded companies, said Thursday that it will sell 40% of its proposed ICN International to the public, twice the amount originally announced. The Costa Mesa drug maker, under fire for not moving quickly enough on the restructuring plans, said it intends to sell the shares in the second quarter and hopes to have the stock listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange.

A dissident shareholder that has pressured ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. to break the company into three parts said Friday that the company should abandon the plans and, instead, sell itself to the highest bidder. Special Situations Partners Inc., based in the Cayman Islands, accused the company of failing to move quickly enough on plans to cut the Costa Mesa drug maker into separate publicly traded companies.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. acquired the rights to two nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for markets in Eastern Europe from an F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd. affiliate, the Costa Mesa drug maker said Monday. ICN said the agreement transfers all rights for Naprosyn and Apranax. Terms and conditions of the acquisition were not disclosed. ICN had been distributing the products under license from La Roche in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slavonia.

Heartland Advisors Inc., which has pushed for a new chief executive at ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., cut its stake in the Costa Mesa drug maker to 4.1% from 5.1%, according to a document filed Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The dissident shareholder, which was ICN's largest investor earlier this year with a 5.2% stake, now owns beneficially more than 3.2 million shares. Heartland said in its SEC document that it purchased 52,450 shares between July 19 and Dec.

Is ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. overpriced on the stock market? Plenty of investors must think so. That's because the short interest in the controversial Costa Mesa drug maker's stock has increased more than 10-fold over the last six months to more than 2.5 million shares in January, according to the New York Stock Exchange. The increase is an even more staggering 3,333% when contrasted with the 73,700 shares that had been shorted a year ago.

Roche Holding is discussing swapping a stake in ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. for stock in the ICN unit that controls rights to its blockbuster hepatitis drug, according to people familiar with the talks. ICN Chairman Milan Panic met with Roche officials in Basel, Switzerland, and an announcement may come as early as this week, sources said. Roche owns less than 5% of the company, the sources said.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. Chairman Milan Panic dropped plans to sell 50,000 shares of the Costa Mesa drug manufacturer's stock, which has lost more than a third of its value in recent weeks, the company said Wednesday. The move comes ahead of ICN's annual meeting next week, when the company is expected to discuss its plan to split into three companies. Panic, along with several other ICN executives, registered last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell shares.