Amgen Hoping to Buy Another Biotech Firm

Amgen Inc. would like to boost earnings and broaden its three-drug product line by buying another biotechnology company that is close to bringing a drug to market, the company’s chief executive said.

“We keep looking,” said Gordon Binder, chairman and CEO of Thousand Oaks-based Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology company.

A new product could boost Amgen’s earnings, which fell last year for the first time since 1994 as the government cut payments on one of the company’s two $1-billion-a-year drugs and the dollar’s appreciation hurt overseas earnings.

While Amgen plans to introduce five products over the next five years, Binder said the first ones are unlikely to be big sellers.

“Their pipeline is viewed as being interesting, but not in the next three years in particular,” said Charles Engelberg, an analyst with AmeriCal Securities.

Amgen’s stock has been hurt by concern over slowing growth of its two major products--Neupogen, an immune system drug, and Epogen, used to treat anemia for patients on dialysis. In October, Amgen introduced a third product, the hepatitis drug Infergen, which had 1997 sales of $3 million.

Binder said it will be difficult to get a reasonable price for a company with a strong product that is in the final phase of clinical trials.

“If you run the numbers, it’s hard to find one that would increase earnings per share,” Binder said while attending a meeting of biotechnology executives in San Francisco.