Catalent Slips To Loss Despite Sales Growth; Buys Micron Technologies

(RTTNews) - Catalent Inc (CTLT) Thursday reported first-quarter net loss of $19.5 million or $0.18 per share compared with a profit of $1.5 million or $0.02 per share last year.

Excluding items, adjusted earnings for the quarter were $0.13 per share compared with a loss of $0.02 per share a year ago.

Revenues for the quarter were $418 million compared with $414 million in the prior year.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated earnings of $0.20 per share on revenues of $411 million for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

For the full year 2015, the company still expects adjusted earnings of $215 million to $225 million on revenues of $1.89 billion to $1.92 billion.

Analysts expect revenues of $1.9 billion for the year.

Catalent is a provider of advanced delivery technologies and development solutions for drugs, biologics and consumer health products.

Also, Catalent said it acquired Micron Technologies, a provider of particle size engineering technologies.

In an important advance in executing its strategy to provide the best drug delivery technologies and the broadest drug development expertise, Catalent will add Micron Technologies' superior particle size engineering capabilities to its suite of drug delivery and development solutions.

Catalent can now partner with more pharmaceutical innovators at the earliest stages of the drug development process with an unrivaled set of options and expertise.

The acquisition is Catalent's second since its IPO in July, and follows the acquisition of Redwood Bioscience, with its SMARTag Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) technology platform, in October 2014.