TRENTON, N.J. - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Wyeth on Thursday turned in two of the drug industry's best second-quarter performances, with both reporting strong profit growth and sailing past Wall Street expectations as they cut costs aggressively.

Roche Holding AG of Switzerland, however, missed analysts' forecasts and, despite strong sales, its profit plunged due to costs for buying biotech giant Genentech.

The three profit reports Thursday all but wrapped up an earnings season for the pharmaceuticals industry dominated by talk of big mergers, relentless cost-cutting and how the global recession, competition from generic drugs and unfavorable currency exchange rates all were squeezing revenue.

Despite their troubles, most drugmakers managed to narrowly surpass Wall Street expectations - mainly because of cost controls, but often because of resilient demand for their medicines.

"You've got an industry that in the news day in, day out, seems to be taking a pounding," said Erik Gordon, a professor and analyst at University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

He cited increasing generic competition, numerous warnings about dangerous drug side effects, difficulties in getting new drugs approved, unproductive research programs and overpriced acquisitions such as Roche's $46.8 billion takeover of Genentech in late March and Eli Lilly & Co.'s $6 billion purchase of ImClone Systems Inc. last fall.

"I actually think it was a pretty good quarter, considering all of the above," Gordon said, adding, "Bristol and Wyeth, they're the stars for this quarter."

Besides strong cost-cutting, the two companies benefited from slightly smaller hits to revenue than most competitors took from the strong dollar. Both raised at least some segments of their 2009 profit forecasts.

In trading Thursday afternoon, Bristol-Myers shares were up 64 cents, or 3.2 percent, at $20.93 and Wyeth shares were up 27 cents at $47.13.

Bristol-Myers posted a 29 percent profit jump due to higher sales of several key products, including blood thinner Plavix, the world's second-bestselling medicine.

It posted net income of $983 million, or 49 cents per share, up from $764 million, or 38 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 3.5 percent to $5.4 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting, on average, earnings per share of 47 cents and revenue of $5.3 billion.

Plavix sales where up 11 percent, to $1.54 billion, while sales of psychiatric drug Abilify jumped 22 percent to $643 million and HIV drug Sustiva was up 11 percent to $312 million.

New York-based Bristol's report came the morning after it agreed to a promising $2.1 billion acquisition of longtime partner biotech company Medarex Inc., its antibody technology for creating drugs and about two dozen potential drugs in development.

On top of that, Bristol executives said they're now on the hunt for the next target for their "String of Pearls" strategy of transforming into a biopharmaceutical company by buying biotech drugs or companies in priority disease areas.

Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth posted a 13 percent jump in profit, to $1.27 billion, or 94 cents per share. That was up from $1.12 billion, or 83 cents a share, a year earlier.

Revenue was down 4 percent, to $5.7 billion; analysts were expecting $5.58 billion.

Excluding restructuring charges and costs for its pending $68 billion acquisition by Pfizer - the industry's biggest deal this year - income would have been 98 cents per share, 13 cents more than Wall Street expected.

The other big deal is Merck & Co.'s $41.1 billion purchase of New Jersey neighbor Schering-Plough Corp., set to close late in the year. The two have a joint venture selling cholesterol drugs whose sales have been declining, lowering second-quarter results for both companies.

Basel-based Roche reported a 29 percent drop in net income for the first six months, citing costs related to the takeover of California-based Genentech.

Net income totaled 4.1 billion Swiss francs ($3.84 billion), down from 5.7 billion francs in the first half of 2008 and below analysts' expectations of 4.9 billion francs.

However, revenue was up 9 percent to 24 billion francs ($22.5 billion), led by sales of cancer drugs such as Avastin and stockpiling of antiviral medicine Tamiflu amid the swine flu pandemic.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.