Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drugmaker, said fourth-quarter earnings rose more than fourfold to $2.83 billion as expenses fell and sales of the company's Lipitor cholesterol treatment jumped.

Net income climbed to 38 cents a share as revenue rose 7 percent to $14.9 billion, partly because of a weaker dollar, New York-based Pfizer said in a statement today. Profit was $602 million, or 8 cents, a year earlier, when litigation expenses and the purchase of Pharmacia Corp. weighed down results.

Revenue from two of Pfizer's biggest drugs, Lipitor and the Celebrex painkiller, jumped by a quarter as Pfizer took market share away from rivals such as Merck & Co. The gains may slow after a study linked Celebrex to heart attacks and caused a year- end drop in prescriptions, and as generic competition damps demand for drugs such as the Neurontin epilepsy pill.

``Investors are not expecting Pfizer to have any growth in the near term,'' Trevor Polischuk, a pharmaceuticals analyst at New York-based Orbimed Advisors, which holds about 6.73 million shares, said in a telephone interview last week. ``If they show any growth whatsoever, the Street will be really surprised.''

Excluding $1.56 billion in expenses, including some related to the Pharmacia purchase, Pfizer's profit was 58 cents a share. That compares with 53 cents a year earlier and the 59-cent average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Pfizer shares rose 5 cents to $25.30 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They dropped 24 percent last year and 13 percent since the negative Celebrex data was disclosed Dec. 17.

Lipitor

Sales of Lipitor, the world's best-selling drug, jumped 23 percent to $3.26 billion. Full-year sales increased 18 percent to $10.9 billion. Chief Executive Officer Hank McKinnell, in a Dec. 6 interview, said he expected Lipitor sales to climb 15 percent in each of the next five or six years.

``The number of people who would benefit from treatment with Lipitor in the United States and around the world is about three to four times the present sales of Lipitor,'' McKinnell, 61, said in the interview.

Lipitor has about 40 percent of the worldwide cholesterol market and more than 42 percent of the U.S. market in total prescriptions, Pfizer said today.

The business, however, is being threatened by India's Ranbaxy Laboratories Inc., which has asked a U.S. court to allow it to sell a generic form of Lipitor before the patents expire in 2010. The trial began Nov. 30 in Wilmington, Delaware.

Celebrex

Celebrex sales rose 24 percent to $1 billion in the quarter, helped by an increase in demand after Merck pulled the competing Vioxx from the market Sept. 30 because of its link to heart attacks and strokes. Pfizer's disclosure Dec. 17 that high doses of Celebrex increased heart risks in a study sent prescriptions falling about 50 percent, according to data from NDCHealth Corp.

McKinnell said in interviews in December that the results of the Celebrex study were unexpected and not consistent with other research. He has said the cardiovascular risks of drugs like Celebrex should be weighed against the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding caused by older painkillers.

Celebrex and Vioxx were designed to avoid the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding by only blocking the Cox-2 enzyme involved with pain. Older drugs may irritate the stomach by interfering with Cox-1, a related enzyme.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has urged doctors to limit prescriptions of Celebrex and Bextra, another Pfizer painkiller that inhibits the Cox-2 enzyme and has been linked to heart risks, until regulators weigh the safety of the drugs at a hearing starting Feb. 16.

Competition

Revenue from Neurontin declined 39 percent in the quarter to $481 million as generic competitors began selling cheaper versions of the drug.

Sales of Pfizer's Viagra treatment for male impotence fell 8 percent to $469 million because of competition from Eli Lilly & Co.'s and Icos Corp's Cialis and Bayer AG's and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Levitra.

McKinnell is bracing for generic competition within two years on Pfizer medicines that generate $14 billion in annual revenue, including the antidepressant Zoloft in 2006 and the blood-pressure treatment Norvasc in 2007.

Zoloft sales rose 7 percent to $959 million in the quarter; revenue from Norvasc inched up 1 percent to $1.25 billion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Ostrow in New York at nostrow@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 19, 2005 07:53 EST