BD enjoys record fourth quarter

Becton Dickinson has reported record quarterly revenues of $1.177 billion in the last quarter of this fiscal year, ended 30 September, with all the company's business units making a contribution to the 9 per cent increase in turnover.

The sales performance was fractionally shy of the Thomson First Call analyst poll of $1.183 billion, and helped by the favourable dollar to euro exchange rate. For the full year, BD reported revenues of $4.528 billion, a 12 per cent increase over a year ago. At constant exchange rates, revenues increased 5 per cent for the quarter and 8 per cent for the fiscal year.

Net income for the fourth quarter increased to $161 million, or 61 cents a share, topping analysts' consensus estimate by a penny. In the same period of 2002, the company earned $131.4 million, or 50 cents, including a charge of 3 cents a share for the writedown of investments.

Revenue growth for the year was driven by safety and prefillable devices, the BD ProbeTec ET diagnostic instrument and the BD FACSAria cell sorting system, which BD Biosciences began shipping at the end of March 2003, said Edward Ludwig, BD's chief executive.

BD also announced name changes for its various business segments and units. The three segment names are now BD Medical (formerly BD Medical Systems), BD Diagnostics (formerly BD Clinical Laboratory Solutions), and BD Biosciences (no change).

Within BD Medical, unit name changes are Diabetes Care (formerly Consumer Healthcare), and Medical Surgical Systems (formerly Medical Surgical). Within BD Diagnostics, the only name change is Preanalytical Systems (formerly Preanalytical Solutions). Finally, within BD Biosciences, name changes are Immunocytometry Systems (formerly Flow Cytometry Instruments and Reagents), Clontech (formerly Molecular Biology Reagents), and Pharmingen (formerly Immunology/Cell Biology Reagents).

In the BD Biosciences segment, worldwide revenues grew 10 per cent to $195 million for the quarter. As noted, revenue growth was driven by strong sales of the new BD FACSAria but this was offset in part by continued weak demand for certain Clontech reagents, as well as a general slowdown in biotechnology research spending affecting the Pharmingen and Discovery Labware units.

For the Medical segment, revenues increased 11 per cent to $635 million. The unit sells hypodermic needles and syringes, infusion therapy devices, insulin injection systems and prefillable drug delivery systems for pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, Diagnostics sales increased 6 per cent to $347 million.

Looking forward to next year, BD estimates that diluted EPS for fiscal 2004 will increase in the range of 10-12 per cent, based on fiscal 2003 earnings per share of $2.15.