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(Reuters) - Pfizer Inc reported violently lower quarterly earnings, hurt by generic forms of its Lipitor cholesterol put ~s into, and the company trimmed its 2012 forecasts because of negative effects of the stronger dollar.

The cosmos's biggest drugmaker, whose shares rose well-nigh 1 percent in premarket trading, declared on Tuesday that it had earned $1.44 billion, or 19 cents by share, in the fourth quarter. That compared through $2.89 billion, or 36 cents by share, a year earlier.

Excluding specific items, Pfizer earned 50 cents by share. Analysts on average expected 47 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Pfizer said results in the latest quarter appeared in the same manner unfavorable largely because of a self-sufficient tax benefit in the year-earlier age.

Revenue fell 4 percent to $16.75 billion, if it were not that was a bit higher than Wall Street expectations of $16.61 billion.

Last year, Pfizer vowed to slit billions of dollars in costs, largely through layoffs of thousands of researchers, to resist plunging sales of Lipitor. The pill had been the earth's top-selling drug for years, capturing annual sales of more than $13 billion at its summit, but it lost U.S. evident protection in late November.

Global fourth-location sales of Lipitor fell 24 percent to $2 billion, including a 42 percent fall away in the United States. But some of Pfizer's other biggest drugs scored diminish sales gains, helped by price increases. Sales of arthritis treatment Enbrel and the Celebrex painkiller every one rose 7 percent, to $865 the great body of the people and $622 million, respectively. Sales of incompetence treatment Viagra rose 5 percent to $523 million.

As in the third quarter, Pfizer's strongest gains came from its nutritional products and dumb creature health units -- noncore businesses that it aims to perchance sell or spin off.

Chief Executive Officer Ian Read without interrupti~ Tuesday said that any separation of the brace businesses would occur between July 2012 and July 2013.

Sales of irrational creature health brands rose 13 percent in the specific place to $1.1 billion, while sales of nutritional products -- including baby formula and maternity supplements -- jumped 22 percent to $598 a thousand thousand.

Pfizer forecast 2012 earnings of $2.20 to $2.30 per share, excluding items. That range was into disgrace from its prior outlook of $2.25 to $2.35.

The set lowered its 2012 revenue forecast to a tier of $60.5 billion to $62.5 billion, from its earlier sight of $62.2 billion to $64.7 billion.

Shares of Pfizer were up 0.6 percent at $21.70 in commercial before the market opened.

(Reporting By Ransdell Pierson; Editing through Derek Caney and Lisa Von Ahn)

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