Forest Labs profit tops Wall Street target

(Reuters) - Forest Laboratories Inc (FRX.N) posted a quarterly profit above Wall Street's target on Tuesday, helped by increased sales of its drugs for Alzheimer's disease, depression and hypertension.

The mid-sized U.S. drugmaker also nudged up its earnings forecast for its fiscal year, which ends in March. The company's shares rose 3 percent.

Forest is counting on a host of new drugs to replace revenue from its top-selling Lexapro anti-depressant, which is set to lose U.S. patent protection in March.

"It's all about the pipeline now, and there's still not a lot of clarity there," Collins Stewart analyst Louise Chen said, adding that she thought the stock increase would probably be "short-lived."

Net income fell to $278.4 million, or $1.04 per share, in the third quarter ended on December 31, from $320.7 million, or $1.11 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts on average were expecting $1.01 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $1.21 billion.

Lexapro sales edged up 1 percent to $593 million. Sales of the company's Namenda Alzheimer's disease treatment rose 6.4 percent to $340 million.

Namenda is expected to lose patent protection in 2015, increasing pressure on Forest's newer drugs to perform well.

Of those products, Viibryd, an anti-depressant launched in August, tallied sales of $18.9 million. Daliresp, a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease drug also launched in August, recorded $8.4 million in sales.

Bystolic, Forest's blood pressure drug, was a strong performer in the quarter, with sales rising 33 percent to $90.6 million.

"The bright point in the quarterly results was that two of Forest's next-generation products, Viibryd and Bystolic, showed above-consensus trends," Sanford Bernstein analyst Ronny Gal said in a research note.

Forest projected fiscal-year earnings of $3.65 to $3.75 per share, raising the forecast by 5 cents at both ends of the range.

Shares of Forest were up 3 percent at $31.84 in morning trading.

(Reporting By Lewis Krauskopf in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Lisa Von Ahn)