Zoetis Inc. is a spinoff from Pfizer Inc. Its IPO was a hot among investors Friday as its shares increased 20 percent from the initial price of $26. The company is a maker of animal health products. Its shares ended the day up $5.01 to $31.01 after it opened the session at $31.50.
Pfizer spun off Zoetis as part of its strategic plan to shed entities outside its core medicine business. Its IPO became the largest one since Facebook’s offering last year. Zoetis is now the world’s largest animal medicine business across the globe.
Analysts are concerned that enthusiasts for the IPO are seeing the company as more of a consumer-based business instead of a pharmaceutical one. This would make it difficult to make predictions based on price-to-earnings ratios.
In other animal medicine news, Perrigo agreed to acquire animal-health products company Velcera for $160 million. Perrigo’s second quarter earnings report beat expectations. Its stock increased 5 percent to $105.28.
Perrigo reported that its net income was $106 million or $1.12 per share compared with $99.7 million for the same period last year. Sales were $883 million compared to last year’s $838.2 million. The company’s adjusted earnings were $1.36 per share, with is slightly higher than the $1.31 forecast from analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Drug giant Merck & Co. dropped more than 3 percent to $41.83 due to the concerns about the release date of odanacatib, which is the company’s drug for osteoporosis that is currently at late-stage trials. The company told analysts that it was still waiting for data from an ongoing study before it releases the treatment on the market.
