What's in a name? For newly transformed Allergan, branded sales

Actavis CEO Brent Saunders

Bye-bye, Actavis. The drugmaker has officially adopted its recent buyout's moniker, meaning it'll be known as Allergan from here on out.

As part of the switch, on Monday the company traded in its "ACT" ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange for the revived "AGN," and it put out a redesigned logo and website that it says mirror the changes it's undergone since the two companies agreed to join hands last November.

"We are ensuring that our corporate identity reflects the transformation of our company within the pharmaceutical industry and our position as a dynamic new breed of company," CEO Brent Saunders said in a statement.

That transformation includes a newfound focus on branded meds--an area it began seriously beefing up with its $25 billion deal for Forest Laboratories in 2014. It bulked that business up further with the Allergan buy, adding products like blockbuster wrinkle-fighter Botox.

And it doesn't plan to stop there. Doubling its branded drug revenue this year is on the agenda for Saunders' company as part of its "growth pharma" ambitions--or, in other words, the blueprints management has laid out to surpass Big Pharma's sluggish expansion rates despite the drugmaker's Big Pharma size.

So far, it's succeeded. In Q1, branded sales increased to $1.7 billion from $572 million year-over-year, with the old Allergan's branded business chipping in $258 million of that haul.

But just because the one-time copycat specialist has new objectives doesn't mean its retired name is going away altogether. The pharma will retain the tag to refer to its U.S. and Canada generics business, it said.

- read Allergan's release

Special Reports: Pharma's top 10 M&A deals of 2014 - Actavis/Allergan - Actavis/Forest Laboratories | Top 10 generics makers by 2012 revenue - Actavis