Investopedia: A Look Back At The Year In Pharmaceuticals

As a group, 2012 has been a middling year for the pharmaceutical sector. Against a roughly 13% year-to-date gain in the S&P 500, the S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF (ARCA:XPH) is up only about 8%. Companies in the pharmaceutical space continue to face heavy pressure to their revenue as key drugs have gone off-patent and many companies have struggled to develop new blockbusters to pick up the slack. Instead, many companies have focused on cost-cutting as a means of improving results and investors seem to be relatively skeptical about the near-term growth potential of the sector.

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