IVAX SEES NICHEPRODUCTS AS ITS FUTURE

The pharmaceutical company of the future will be a blend of both proprietary and generic businesses, making important products available at reasonable prices, IVAX corporate officers told a meeting of the New York Society of Security Analysts. The company's business strategy includes niche products, using one infrastructure to service different channels of distribution.

The company's generic division is focusing on both hard-to-duplicate products and standard products, and that unit will have $300 million in sales in 1993, said company chairman Philip Frost. Ivax has two joint ventures in China, one making asthma inhalers and another making a wide range of products.

In these times where price is critical, filling therapeutic voids rather than developing me-too products must be the strategy for companies selling proprietary medicines, the officers noted. Ivax is working on drugs for chronic use, new uses for existing drugs and licensing-in products in late-stage development. Focusing on a few therapeutic areas allows the company both to have experts in house (neurology and pulmonary, for example), and to have sales people focus in those fields.