Merck profit slumps

GERMAN chemical and pharmaceutical group Merck has reported a sharp slump in quarterly net profit.

GERMAN chemical and pharmaceutical group Merck has reported a sharp slump in quarterly net profit but forecast higher earnings from its chemicals units and unveiled its first site in China.

Merck said its third quarter net profit fell by 26.8 per cent from the same period a year earlier to 148.1 million euro, owing to poor results in liquid crystal production units and chemical divisions in general.

Sales gained 2.7 per cent to 1.94 billion euros.

Earnings should now begin to pick up as well, it added.

``Even in our chemical businesses, which were substantially impacted by the economic crisis, we see a clear trend toward recovery,'' Merck chairman Karl-Ludwig Kley was quoted as saying.

He said Merck had bought the pigment producer Taizhu, giving the German company ``an initial production point in China.''.

Merck would reduce the number of workers on state-subsidised shorter working hours and expected to eliminate use of the program by the end of the year, Kley added.

In the group's pharmaceutical branch, sales gained 5.8 per cent in the third quarter to 1.313 billion euros, in large part owing to stronger demand for the multiple sclerosis treatment Rebif, cancer drug Erbitux and fertility treatment Gonal-f.

For the full year, Merck forecast sales growth of around two percent.

AFP