Trade at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange opened Sunday with a sharp downturn, with Teva Pharmaceutical’s shares dropping by 18% and dragging the leading indices with it.
The company lost a third of its value in two trading days.
Maylan and Perrigo shares dropped 6% and 3% percent respectively.
The blue chip TA 35 dropped by 1.1%, TA 125 by 0.7% and SME-60 by 0.2%. The Oil & Gas Index shed 0.8%. Meanwhile, the Bank Index rose 0.6% and the Real Estate Index rose 0.2%.
Tel Aviv fell Thursday 17.8% to 91.50 shekels ($25.42) in Tel aviv and in New York it was down even more in late trading – a drop of 23 percent to $24.18.
Stung by declining prices for generic drugs and debt, Teva Pharmaceutical said Thursday it would cut 7,000 jobs by the year’s end and take a host of other cost-cutting measures.
Teva reported a 18.4% drop in second-quarter earnings on Thursday, a bigger drop than Wall Street had expected, causing its share price to tumble.
Teva also plans to close or sell six plants in 2017 and nine more in 2018. The firm has also decided to pull out from 45 countries by the end of 2017.
The second quarter caps a year of bad news for the company that includes the purchase of Allergan’s generics business, which left it with a huge debt, and the departure of its CEO and chief financial officer.
In addition, on Thursday Teva said a New York court rejected its claim of fraud against the owners of Rimsa, a Mexican company it bought last year.
In a conference call with analysts on Thursday, Teva executives offered little in the way of hope for a turnaround, saying the company expected the fall in U.S. generic drug prices to accelerate in the second half of 2017 and into 2018.
