BMS sees year-on-year earnings increase of nearly $60 million in Q2

NEW YORK The anti-blood clot drug Plavix and the schizophrenia drug Abilify helped boost Bristol-Myers Squibb profits, Bristol announced Thursday.

The company earned $764 million in the second quarter of this year, compared with last year’s $706 million. Bristol expects to save $1.5 billion by 2010, hoping to offset the loss of sales when its patent for Plavix expires in 2012, opening it to generic competition.

Global sales of Plavix jumped to $1.39 billion—17 percent—in Q2, after generic supplies of the medicine that had competed with it for about a year in the United States became exhausted.

Plavix (clopidogrel bisulfate) had sales of $4.755 billion in 2007, according to Bristol financial data.