Vivus Hires Credit Suisse as Pfizer Cuts Into Sales

Vivus Inc. said Tuesday it hired investment banker Credit Suisse First Boston to help it explore options, including selling itself, as the impotence-treatment maker has lost sales to Pfizer Inc.’s Viagra.

The Mountain View-based company said one of the options under consideration is finding a large pharmaceutical company to help market its Muse impotence treatment to the thousands of primary-care physicians who are prescribing Viagra.

Vivus’ stock has fallen more than 80% in the last year as the Food and Drug Administration completed approval of Viagra, a pill that garnered unprecedented sales of more than $400 million in its first three months on the market.

Doctors cut back on prescribing Muse, which requires men to insert a drug-laced pellet into the urethra, once Viagra was available.

“The stock price has declined pretty significantly and we’re trying to meet our obligation to shareholders as quickly and aggressively as we can,” Vivus Chief Executive Leland Wilson said.

Vivus reported a loss of 83 cents a share, including a charge in the first half of 1998, compared with earnings of 55 cents a diluted share in the year-earlier period. The company’s U.S. product sales in the first half of the year totaled $30.7 million, about half of what it reported in the year-earlier period.

Credit Suisse First Boston is the investment banking unit of Credit Suisse Group.

Vivus stock was unchanged at $4.75 on Nasdaq.