Packaging system sales for the three months ended June 30, 2010 were $201m (€152m), up around $10m on the comparable period last year despite $4.4m in “unfavourable currency impacts.”
West said that increased demand for its Westar, FluroTec and Teflon-coated products had offset a lower revenue contribution from its standard packaging technologies, which it said had fallen due to customer inventory cuts.
Divisional operating profit was $37.6m, a modest advance on the $35.4m the group posted for the year earlier.
Similar sales growth was achieved by West’s drug delivery systems business with revenues also climbing some $10m on the year earlier period to $82m.
However, unlike the packaging systems growth which was based on in-house products, the delivery division benefited by $4.7m from sales of the Erin safety made by the Plastef Investissements subsidiary it acquired in 2009 .
Excluding the Erin revenue, which did not generate any gross profit as it was covered by a pre-exiting supply agreement, operating profit from delivery system sales fell $1.4m for the quarter to $3.6m.
And, despite being positive about the revenue growth, West CEO Donald Morel still lowered the firm’s forecast for the year to earnings per share of $2.08 to $2.20 from the $2.19 to $2.35 range it announced earlier this year .
Morel also cut the firm’s 2010 revenue guidance to between $1.08bn and $1.11bn from $1.09bn to $1.12bn which fits.
To end on a positive note, Morel said West has landed its first “large-scale” order for its Daikyo Crystal Zenith syringe and anticipates finalizing significant customer-funded development agreements for the product this year.