NEW YORK - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., the world's No. 15 drug maker by revenue, reports earnings for the third quarter on Thursday morning. The following is a summary of key developments and analyst opinion related to the period.

OVERVIEW: Growing competition for its top drugs threatens revenue for the maker of blood thinner Plavix, the world's second-bestselling medication, and psychiatric drug Abilify. That's before generic competition to multiple medicines starts hitting in a couple years.

Plavix has long been the standard anti-clotting treatment. It brought the company about $5.6 billion in revenue last year, and partner Sanofi-Aventis SA made about $3.7 billion more on foreign sales.

Plavix got its first real competition when Eli Lilly & Co.'s Effient got approved in July. Effient prevents more heart attacks than Plavix, but also causes more internal bleeding, so it will carry a boxed warning about that risk.

Three other blood thinners could get approved in the U.S. soon.

Research in August showed one of them, Brilinta from AstraZeneca PLC, reduced patients' chances of dying by 20 percent, compared with Plavix. Johnson & Johnson's Xarelto got a favorable review from FDA advisers in March, and Boehringer Ingelheim's Rendix already is on sale in about 40 other countries.

Abilify, the No. 2 drug for Bristol-Myers with $2.2 billion in 2008 sales, got even more competition in August when the Food and Drug Administration approved Schering-Plough Corp.'s Saphris for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Existing competitors include Pfizer Inc.'s Geodon, Johnson & Johnson's Risperdal, AstraZeneca PLC's Seroquel and Eli Lilly & Co.'s Zyprexa. The drugs have combined sales of well over $15 billion a year.

On the upside, the FDA in July approved Onglyza, a new diabetes drug developed with partner AstraZeneca PLC. It was approved for sale in the European Union's 27 countries two weeks ago. The drug is part of the DPP-4 inhibitor class of diabetes drugs, so it competes with Merck & Co.'s popular Januvia.

In September, Bristol-Myers completed a $2.1 billion acquisition of Medarex Inc., a biotech drugmaker developing treatments for immune system diseases and cancer. The two companies previously had been collaborating on a late-stage drug candidate, ipilimumab, for advanced skin cancer.

In July, GlaxoSmithKline PLC bought Bristol-Myers's branded generic business in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Libya and Yemen for about $23.2 million in cash.

BY THE NUMBERS: Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect, on average, earnings per share of 51 cents and revenue of $5.5 billion.