Bristol-Myers May Sell Consumer Products Unit

GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson Inc. may be potential buyers of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s consumer-products business, which includes the Excedrin and Bufferin headache medicines, investors said Wednesday.

Bristol-Myers is considering a sale of the assets to focus on its larger pharmaceuticals business, people familiar with the situation said.

An acquirer would get a business that generated 2003 sales of $354 million, about 1.7% of New York-based Bristol-Myers’ total revenue, and gain brands such as Keri moisturizers and Comtrex cold medicines.

“When you look at these products, scale matters,” said Manoj Tandon, an analyst at Pzena Investment Management in New York, which manages $10 billion, including shares of Bristol- Myers. “J&J;, Novartis and Glaxo all have the scale to make this business more profitable.”

Bristol-Myers spokesman Rob Hutchison declined to comment on whether the unit was for sale.

The company said in a regulatory filing last year that revenue at its consumer business had fallen from $424 million in 2001, partly because demand for Excedrin and other consumer brands had not grown.

Bristol-Myers has been selling assets to focus on its pharmaceuticals business.

Shares of Bristol-Myers fell 8 cents to $24.79 on the New York Stock Exchange.

London-based GlaxoSmithKline gets about $5 billion in sales annually from its consumer products. Glaxo spokesman Chris Hunter-Ward declined to comment.

Johnson & Johnson’s consumer business generated $7.4 billion in sales in 2003, while Novartis’ over-the-counter business, which makes the laxative Ex-Lax and Theraflu for colds and flu, had sales of $1.8 billion.