Al­ler­gan chief Saun­ders takes a painful $2.5B hit on an ug­ly PhI­II flop

Now that Al­ler­gan chief Brent Saun­ders has stared down the ac­tivists — for now, any­way — the com­pa­ny is back with a $2.5 bil­lion write­down for their failed de­pres­sion drug ra­pastinel. The move spiked its net loss to $2.41 bil­lion, or $7.25 a share $AGN — up from a loss of 99 cents a share for the same pe­ri­od a year ago.

Al­ler­gan’s main­stay Botox fran­chise, though, saved the day, al­low­ing Saun­ders to sweet­en the sour news with fore­casts of ris­ing prof­its on top of an earn­ings and rev­enue beat. But in­vestors weren’t easy to win over, with the stock tak­ing an ini­tial 0.5% hit on the news.

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