Still chasing biosimilars? Multinational pharmaceutical companies have begun to sell

Competition pressure in the pharmaceutical industry has increased, and some multinational pharmaceutical companies are cutting back on their operations in an attempt to protect themselves.

During May Day, a $3.335 billion deal was born: India's Biocom Pharmaceuticals acquired Huizhi's biosimilar business.

Huizhi is a company established after the independence of Pfizer's generic drug business, and its biosimilar business is mainly adalimumab and enercept, with the main market in the United States. Biokang is a biosimilar enterprise in India, and its core products are insulin glargine, bevacizumab, trastuzumab and other varieties.

Under the agreement between the two parties, Biocon paid $2 billion in cash to Huizhi and issued $1 billion worth of compulsory convertible preferred shares.

The president of Biocom revealed to the media that equity and debt financing have been put in place, waiting for the Indian regulator to accelerate approval.

Hui Zhi cut down the biosimilar drug sector, which is only the epitome of the transformation of multinational pharmaceutical companies. According to incomplete statistics from the Health Bureau, major pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis, Pfizer, and Roche have started business adjustments, and layoffs and departmental integration have become the norm. The business focus of foreign companies is being restructured.

Global business integration with a focus on oncology

On February 22, GlaxoSmithKline officially announced the divestiture of its consumer health division and the establishment of a new company, Halon.

GSK consumer goods business brands are numerous, and the most well-known in The country is probably Comfort Da Toothpaste. According to GSK's plan, Haleon is expected to be operational in mid-2022 and achieve profit growth of more than 10% over the next five years. Sales are expected to reach $46 billion by 2031.

After the divestiture and restructuring, GSK will focus more on core therapeutic areas such as infectious diseases, HIV, oncology and immunology/respiratory, with management setting a 5%-7% growth target. In 2021, GSK achieved revenue of $46,914 million, up 5% year-on-year. The new plan means that GSK's management will have to work harder in the coming years.

Novartis has also made business segment adjustments. In April this year, Novartis announced the integration of the two major departments of pharmaceutical and oncology, the formation of a new innovative drug division, forming a pattern of four major departments of innovative drugs, Alcon, Sandoz and enterprises, and it is expected that the reform will be fully completed and put into operation by the end of 2020.

This restructuring will inevitably lead to the departure of Novartis employees. The industry expects Novartis to lay off thousands of jobs worldwide to save $1 billion.

It can be seen from the adjustment of Huizhi, GSK and Novartis that multinational pharmaceutical companies are concentrating their resources on innovative drugs with small competition, and for sectors with sufficient competition, even if the performance is acceptable, they will not hesitate to abandon it.

Hui Zhi's biosimilar business actually has hidden feelings: in 2023, all the patents of the original research adalimumab "Humira" will expire, and a large number of generic drug companies will stand up to challenge the former "medicine king". Hui Zhi originally had a good income from the sale of adalimumab, and it is difficult to say by 2023.

There are also reasons for the choice of GSK and Novartis. The field of oncology has become the first choice for the transformation of multinational pharmaceutical companies. According to Frost & Sullivan's analysis, the global anti-tumor drug market size reached $209.9 billion in 2022. At present, Gilead, who is an antiviral drug, has announced that it will increase the research and development of oncology drugs, and Sanofi will shift its development focus to oncology and rare disease business in 2020.

According to incomplete statistics from the Health Bureau, 19 pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Bayer, Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Roche, Sanofi and Takeda have laid out oncology drug pipelines, and their products have entered the early clinical development stage. These companies would rather give up some of the businesses that are still quite profitable, but also gamble on new growth points in the future.

Business adjustments in China, new departments and layoffs in parallel

In the Chinese market, the movement of multinational pharmaceutical companies is not too big, but there are also some adjustments with the change of headquarters.

On April 22, Novartis announced that Ying Zhang, President and Managing Director of Innovative Drugs China, will be appointed president of Novartis China. According to the unified planning of the headquarters, Novartis China will also carry out department integration and team optimization.

AstraZeneca has been working on division mergers. In February this year, AstraZeneca announced that it would merge the Respiratory and Autoimmune Division, the Digestion and Respiratory Atomization Division to establish the Respiratory, Digestive and Autoimmune Division. AstraZeneca's Breath Atomization and Digestion divisions were just merged in June 2021 and are now being merged.

The continuous integration of departments has caused AstraZeneca to leave the management frequently for more than a year. In this regard, Wang Lei, president of AstraZeneca International Business and China, also admitted that some of the adjustments of departments and personnel are active, some are passive, and once they appear, they must form a synergy with the strategy and structure to eliminate adverse effects.

Pfizer China has also made great adjustments, china president Peng Zhenke took office less than half a year, set up hospital emergency, tumor, rare disease, inflammation and immunity, vaccines, broad market six independent business departments, of which the "broad market division" is obviously against China's grassroots market.

In addition, roche, Eli Lilly, GSK, Takeda, Pfizer and many other multinational pharmaceutical companies in China have reported cutting sales teams in recent years. Some are because departments have been cut, and some are the overall business line contraction, which are the pains caused by industry changes.

At the end of March this year, the first and third parties transferred the production and sales rights of colabitol preparations in mainland China and the entire equity of the production company that produced the preparation to Chongqing Pharmacists; Takeda's five patent expired drug business in Japan was eventually acquired by Haisen Pharmaceutical for 230 million US dollars; italy Dongpei Pharmaceutical also stopped promoting its Senejiming eye drops in China.

Compared with domestic innovative pharmaceutical companies, multinational pharmaceutical companies in China are not having a good life. One eye should stare at the new trends of domestic generic drugs and collection, and the other eye should stare at whether the domestic emerging innovative drugs have robbed them of their core business. In the context of the transformation and upgrading of the global pharmaceutical industry, multinational pharmaceutical companies must constantly adjust flexibly in order to maintain rapid growth in performance.

Text | Xiaomi operates | 23 Figure | Visual China

#Domestic innovative pharmaceutical companies ##晖致 #