New York Times: Vanity's Downturn - Botox Use & Allergan (AGN) Sales Dip

We noted last year that higher end plastic surgery was taking hits as Americans could no longer use their house to subsidize their breasts, but folks it's really get *ahem* ugly out there. (forgive me - that was just too easy) Not only are make up sales cratering [Jan 16: Make Up is Not Recession Proof] but now this?! Outrageous - if the lack of access to God given right to Botox does not bring the American people marching in the Streets I have no idea what will rile up these generations of slackers!

My personal hope is we have some sort of Botox Bailout as part of the stimulus plan - we just cannot stand for this indignity as a people.

• Wrinkled faces may be the latest example of recession chic. As consumers cut back in the third quarter of last year on expensive aesthetic procedures like breast implant operations, pharmaceutical executives and doctors predicted that one segment of the nation’s estimated $12 billion-a-year cosmetic medicine market would prove more resistant to the weak economy: antiwrinkle shots like Botox.
• But Wednesday’s earnings report from Allergan, the maker of Botox and a leader in cosmetic medical products, indicates that revenue from the less expensive injection treatments is also faltering. The company reported that sales of Botox — both for wrinkle-smoothing and for medical problems like eyelid spasms — fell about 3 percent, to about $329 million in the fourth quarter, compared with the corresponding quarter in 2007.
• Meanwhile, Allergan’s sales of skin-plumping injections — called dermal fillers or facial fillers — fell 8.8 percent, to about $56 million in the quarter, compared with the year-earlier period.
• The company’s sales of breast implants were about $71 million in the fourth quarter of last year, down 12 percent compared with the same period in 2007.
• David E. I. Pyott, the chief executive of Allergan, said in the earnings call that the company had put incentives in place to encourage consumers to have cosmetic procedures even during the economic downturn. These include a $50 coupon on a Botox treatment and a $100 rebate if a customer buys two syringes of Juvéderm, a facial filler. (oh thank God... there are executives in the country looking out for the little people)
• “The message is: this market is going to struggle for a while,” Mr. Nachman said, noting that many people who used to have antiwrinkle shots frequently are now stretching out the time between treatments. “If someone was getting four injections and now they are getting two, right there that is down 50 percent.”

No position