Five major shareholders dumped more than 300,000 shares of C.R. Bard Inc. (NYSE:BCR) during the med-tech maker’s third quarter.
Capital Fund Management, Contravisory Investment Management, Public Employees Retirement Assn. of Colorado, Texas Permanent School Fund and Santa Fe Partners cumulatively sold 324,739 shares for roughly $11.8 million between June 30 and Sept. 30, according to SEC filings.
Bard beat The Street with its third-quarter results in the three months ended Sept. 30. The medical device maker posted profits of $130.1 million, or $1.46 per diluted share, on sales of $719.2 million.
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That’s 2.0 percent more profit and 6.0 percent more revenues than during the same period last year, when Murray Hill, N.J.-based Bard reported profits of $127.5 million, or $1.34 diluted EPS, on sales of $678.4 million.
The EPS results beat Wall Street’s expectations by 2 cents when adjusted for one-time items; Bard logged adjusted EPS of $1.62, when analysts had expected earnings of $1.60 per share.
Bard reported its Q3 earnings and its $250 million acquisition of Medivance in late October.
Mesh lawsuits have piled up for C.R. Bard. Earlier this year, dozens of patients with lawsuits asked to join a multi-district federal case against the company for allegedly selling defective and dangerous products – its Avaulta transvaginal mesh.
In one of the most recent suits, Lois Houghton wants a jury to decide whether Bard was negligent in designing the product and whether it failed to warn patients and doctors of potential risks.
The multi-district litigation, consolidated from 21 individual lawsuits in October 2010, includes complaints from women implanted with three different types of Bard mesh: The Avaulta Biosynthetic, the Avaulta Plus and the Avaulta Solo mesh. Earlier this month 29 other patients who filed suits regarding other Bard mesh products (Pelvicol, PelviLace, PelviSoft, Pelvitex, Uretex or Align mesh) asked to join the multidistrict litigation.
From 2008 to 2010, the FDA received 1,503 adverse event reports associated with mesh used for POP repair, five times as many as the agency received from 2005 to 2007, according to the release.
FDA panel meetings this month appeared to lean toward reclassifying transvaginal mesh products as Class III, the highest-risk category for medical devices, without recalling existing products.
Fellow mesh makers, including Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Endo Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc. (NSDQ:ENDP) agreed that more safety studies and labeling changes could help warn of potential risks and proposed that new applications for transvaginal mesh products require clinical testing.