Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Sanofi-Aventis SA, benefiting from demand for swine flu vaccines, raised its full-year profit growth forecast even as generic competition eroded sales.

Earnings per share will rise about 11 percent this year at constant exchange rates and excluding selected items, compared with an earlier estimate of around 10 percent, France’s largest drugmaker said today. The company expects to sell $500 million worth of swine flu vaccine this quarter.

The flu boost may not last beyond April, Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher said. The 49-year-old CEO is looking outside Sanofi’s own labs for products to sustain sales growth as older drugs like Plavix and Eloxatin face generic competition. Sanofi agreed to buy a French maker of nutritional supplements today and an experimental cancer drug from Micromet Inc. yesterday.

“We are slowly starting to see the impact of generics but it was another good quarter for Sanofi and Viehbacher is taking all the right steps to counter this problem,” said Jerome Forneris, who helps manage $12 billion at Banque Martin Maurel in Marseille and owns Sanofi shares.

Adjusted net income rose 16 percent in the third quarter to 2.23 billion euros ($3.31 billion) excluding selected items, the company said in a statement today. That beat the 2.15 billion- euro median estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Revenue climbed 8 percent. Older products showed signs of erosion. Sales of the colon cancer drug Eloxatin dropped 41 percent as did European sales of the blood-thinner Plavix. More than 20 percent of the French company’s medicines face generic competition by 2013.

Acquisitions Continue

Viehbacher, who joined 11 months ago, has spent about 6.2 billion euros on acquisitions this year to gain generic-drug makers in Brazil, Mexico and India, promising cancer drugs as well as the half it didn’t already own of the Merial animal- health venture. This week’s deals included Laboratoire Oenobiol of France and an experimental Micromet drug that helps attack cancer by harnessing the body’s own defenses.

The drugmaker’s experimental cancer treatment BSI-201, which it gained in the acquisition of BiPar Sciences Inc. in April, could have “blockbuster sales” and be available no later than 2011, Viehbacher said today in an interview from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The pace of acquisitions will probably continue as the company seeks to further expand in emerging markets and areas such as ophthalmology, Viehbacher said today on a conference call. At the same time, “a major acquisition is not on the radar screen,” he said.

Viehbacher said in the interview that he’s looking for deals valued at less than $10 billion in vaccines, emerging markets and over-the-counter medicines.

Sanofi fell 1.14 euros, or 2.2 percent, to 49.75 euros in Paris trading.

To contact the reporter on this story: Albertina Torsoli in Paris at atorsoli@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 30, 2009 12:44 EDT