Merck Conf Call Highlights

Merck MRK reported its third quarter earnings on Monday. Shares of the company are down 2%. Below are some key highlights from its conference call: Segments: • In our Diabetes business, we reallocated resources and invested significantly in JANUVIA and have now reported our second consecutive quarter of growth in the U.S. and international markets. • This marks an important turnaround from where we were last year. • Our Acute Care business grew by double digits this quarter as we're now seeing the impact of our investments. • These brands will continue to be key drivers of growth in emerging markets. • Our Vaccines business remains a fundamental contributor to Merck despite a decline this quarter due to the timing of U.S. public sector purchases. • In Oncology, our integrated business unit has made strides to file and launch KEYTRUDA. • This quarter, we received approval from the FDA for KEYTRUDA, the first anti-PD-1 therapy approved in the U.S. for advanced melanoma. • We also recently received breakthrough designation from the FDA for KEYTRUDA as a potential therapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer. • We continue to study KEYTRUDA in more than 30 different tumor types and are encouraged by recent data presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology in five different cancers. • This approach led us to divest human health products and business areas that amounted to nearly $1 billion in annual revenue. • That focus also led to the recently completed sale of our $2 billion revenue Consumer Care business to Bayer. • Animal Health saw strong growth this quarter across all species. • We look forward to additional innovation coming out of our Animal Health pipeline and remain committed to growing this business, which is already a market leader in key segments of the global animal health market. • We've made significant progress in redesigning our operating model and reducing our cost base. • You recall that last October we targeted a net reduction in annual operating expenses of approximately $2.5 billion off our full-year 2012 expense levels by the end of 2015. • As a result of disciplined cost management I'm pleased that we remain on track to achieve our target for 2014 and our overall savings goal by the end of 2015. • Over the past 12 months, we've returned nearly $11.5 billion to our shareholders. • We are encouraged by the growth trends we saw in the third quarter and the month of October. • We are seeing positive results from our efforts to defend our 75% market share and to grow the DPP-4 class. • In our international market sales grew 4% driven by Europe and the emerging markets. • Sales declined in Japan due to the 10% re-pricing that occurred in April and the overall competitive environment for DPP-4s. • We are confident that we will deliver global sales growth for JANUVIA franchise in 2014. • Next in hospital and specialty care, sales of Isentress were $410 million in the third quarter, a decline of 3%. • Internationally our growth in Europe was balanced by the timing of tenders in the emerging markets. • Sales of our immunology products reach more than $700 million in the third quarter growing 9%. • Now turning to our vaccine business, in the third quarter vaccine sales were approximately $1.7 million • Sales of ZOSTAVAX were approximately $180 million in the quarter, declining 2% compared to last year.