Novartis Consumer Health's return to shelf on track, Theraflu relaunching next

BASEL, Switzerland — Novartis Consumer Health will be relaunching Theraflu for the 2014-2015 cough-cold season, Brian McNamara, Novartis division head OTC, told analysts Wednesday. 

"As you know, in the U.S. business we launched Lamisil and Triaminic and Excedrin end of 2012 and 2013. About halfway through the year, we launched Benefiber. And for next year, we expect to launch Theraflu for that cough and cold season," he said. 

Overall, Novartis' consumer business is doing well. The Consumer Health division, which includes Animal Health, posted $1 billion in net sales for the company's fourth quarter, representing 8% growth. Results were mainly driven by strong performance of key brands globally and product re-launches in the U.S., the company reported. 

"We also made good progress on our quality agenda. As we’ve talked about before, we put a significant amount of attention up against this, and it paid off in 2013," noted Joseph Jimenez, Novartis CEO. "We had a good FDA inspection at Lincoln," he said. "This is our OTC site that was in trouble. We got a good audit by the FDA and we’re now shipping product out of that site. Two of the three Sandoz sites that were under a warning letter, the original warning letter, are now compliant based on the FDA inspections, and we’re waiting for feedback on the third site in Wilson."