Written by StockNews.com

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (ADR) (NYSE: TEVA) early Thursday posted mixed first quarter earnings but backed its full-year outlook, as a recent acquisition began to hugely bolster its top line.

The Israeli generic pharmaceutical giant reported Q1:

• earnings per share (EPS) of $1.06, which was $0.03 better than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $1.03 [while]
• revenues rose 17.0% from last year to $5.63 billion, slightly missing analysts’ view for $5.69 billion...[noting] the revenue gains were mostly due to its acquisition of the Actavis Generics business, which was acquired back in August of last year.

Looking ahead, TEVA:

• reaffirmed its 2017 EPS outlook of $4.90 to $5.30, which is well ahead of the $4.81 per share that analysts are expecting.

...[Dr. Peterburg] commented via press release:

“We are pleased that the transaction synergies and additional cost reductions are on track, and we now expect to realize cumulative net synergies and cost reduction of approximately $1.5 billion by the end of 2017, an increase of $200 million compared to our previous guidance. Notably, we have reduced our gross debt by $1.2 billion in the quarter. We are also pursuing the sale of certain non-core assets, including our global Women’s Health business and our Oncology and Pain business in Europe, to pay down debt.

In Specialty, we have received several important approvals, including the recent approval and launch of AUSTEDO for Huntington’s disease.

Looking forward to the rest of 2017, we are reaffirming our full-year outlook. While we have several challenges facing us, including the U.S Generics market dynamics and greater instability in the Venezuela market, we are very confident that the global business we have built will allow Teva to thrive in the future as the leader in the generics industry.”

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (ADR) shares rose $0.48 (+1.53%) in premarket trading Thursday. Year-to-date, TEVA has declined -12.78%, versus a 7.78% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

TEVA currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of D (Sell) and is ranked #70 of 135 stocks in the Medical – Pharmaceuticals category.