Looking stateside, I'll do Europe and Asia later, big shift is Bristol Myers Squibb dropping out of the top five by REV (median estimated).
The pair that jumps out to me are actually AbbVie and Pfizer, might be some bias though I suspect AbbVie is tough to hit.
also J&J =🤯
In high growth land, Neurocrine versus Alnylam stands out; while in the middle Regeneron versus Vertex.
Then potential outliers, BioMarin which might need some modeling changes, along with Moderna, though at least expectations are lower for both.
Interesting setups methinks.
-jb
p.s. my big biases are that stateside Pfizer, Biogen, Neurocrine = LONG
Was asked about thoughts wrt the Stat piece on the LOE cliffs facing biopharma and well, let's just drop the wall of text into this piece - I could go on and on but to start:
[the Stat article https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/08/jpm-2025-expiring-drug-patents-could-spur-pharma-mergers-acquisitions/ ]
Figure, start with the lay of the land:
> $250B in 2011 is $350B today
> that is darn near the $400B quoted (i.e., it is a good comp)
> this analysis covers eight years
- i.e., lots of extrapolation
> 2028 is the BIG year thanks to Merck (MSD)
> otherwise, it is all pretty similar
> BMS has a lot of lifting to do
> Pfizer has to think about the salesforce (they do Eliquis)
> in all cases the path lower is likely not so clear
> then you have IRA, etc.
> Novartis is one that worries me as their issue (Entresto) is very soon, still growing, and their top seller
> if that isn't bad enough Cosentyx (#2) goes in 2027
Firepower is likely overstated for the group but makes for a fun headline - Pfizer does not have $29B in capacity.. it is maybe half that in a year to eighteen months.
People forget that unless you're re-orging everything, you have an institution to feed - so you're probably looking for assets to slot in and as the date approaches you can't take as much science risk.
Also, some of these folks run much broader businesses than others; the traditional line between pharma and biotech... It also ignores the Japanese and CSL..
*and this may be the last window to do mega mergers for a long time
people are overly discounting that lever
**thinking mergers may continue to be eschewed and more partnerships are likely - or maybe that is my bias as historically partnerships have been the best - even if you regret not having all the economics
lg biopharma has many levers to pull on and the uncertainty added to the mix (higher rates + political) = greater discount rates used in modeling ... tough sledding
but in 2025 a lot of science projects read out
2026 is probably the big year imho
but watch for blowups wrt inline products and late-stage pipelines, usually a few months later stuff happens
GSK and Pfizer will both be looking for something to take up the slack from their respective RSV franchises as those expectations will be coming down materially, etc.
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