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MRK Preview: Solid Cash Flow

By Brian Gilmartin

 About this article:
 Merck is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings before the bell on Wednesday morning, and analysts are looking for the company to earn 75 cents per share, for year-over-year growth of 5%, on $5.977 billion in revenue, for a year-over-year decline of 1.5%. When we covered the Merck call last quarter, the poor results led us to believe that earnings expectations would continue to decline, and that has been the case, although the rate of decline is moderating as Merck and a number of other large-cap pharmas (see Tom Au's preview for Pfizer ) are looking at trough valuations. Exiting the July conference call, analysts were at $3.29 in EPS on $24.183 billion in revenue for 2008 and $3.59 in EPS on $25.253 billion in revenue for 2009, for expected year-over-year growth of 9% and 4%, respectively. Today, analysts expect the company to post EPS of...

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