UPDATE 1-King Pharma profit falls as Altace sales dive

(Rewrites first paragraph; adds details)

NEW YORK, May 8 (Reuters) - King Pharmaceuticals Inc (KG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) posted a 24 percent drop in first-quarter profit on Thursday as sales of its Altace blood-pressure drug plunged due to competition from generics.

Net income fell to $87.6 million, or 36 cents per share, from $115.9 million, or 48 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were 37 cents per share, 2 cents ahead of analysts' average forecast, according to Reuters Estimates.

Revenue fell 16 percent to $432 million.

Sales of Altace, King's biggest-selling medicine until recently, dropped nearly 50 percent to $80 million. Altace began seeing U.S. competition from generic copies in December.

Sales of King's Skelaxin muscle relaxant nudged up 4 percent to $116 million. Sales of its Thrombin JMI product for controlling bleeding rose nearly 5 percent to $67 million.

Last October King said it would cut its work force by 20 percent, or 520 jobs, after its Altace patent was declared invalid. (Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and John Wallace)