Botox Use & Allergan AGN Sales Dip

While most plastic surgeons use BOTOX and dermal fillers as loss leaders to get clients in the door, the current economic conditions vave forced them to re-examine that business approach. Many have started to see this as a good way to keep some cashflow in tough times. But it seems even the the injection cosmetics sector of the industry is takin it on the chin.

Wrinkled faces may be the latest example of recession chic. As consumers cut back in the third quarter of last year on expensive aesthetic procedures like breast implant operations, pharmaceutical executives and doctors predicted that one segment of the nation’s estimated $12 billion-a-year cosmetic medicine market would prove more resistant to the weak economy: antiwrinkle shots like Botox.

But Wednesday’s earnings report from Allergan, the maker of Botox and a leader in cosmetic medical products, indicates that revenue from the less expensive injection treatments is also faltering. The company reported that sales of Botox — both for wrinkle-smoothing and for medical problems like eyelid spasms — fell about 3 percent, to about $329 million in the fourth quarter, compared with the corresponding quarter in 2007.

Meanwhile, Allergan’s sales of skin-plumping injections — called dermal fillers or facial fillers — fell 8.8 percent, to about $56 million in the quarter, compared with the year-earlier period.

The company’s sales of breast implants were about $71 million in the fourth quarter of last year, down 12 percent compared with the same period in 2007.

Read full article via New York Times

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Posted by admin on Feb 8 2009. Filed under Injectables. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry