In the fourth quarter of last year, the third pandemic of COVID-19 began in South Korea as well as in the United States and Europe, but it was found that global Big Pharma continued to grow.

Global Big Pharma, which started to rebound in 3Q after suffering a slump until the first half of the year, expanded their growth further in 4Q.

Nevertheless, except for BMS and AbbVie, which have greatly expanded their growth due to the merger and acquisition effect, it was difficult to find a company that recorded double-digit growth in annual sales.

 According to a report compiled by Newsmp, it was confirmed that AbbVie and BMS, as well as Lilly, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca, recorded double-digit growth in 4Q.

In 2019, AbbVie and BMS, which completed the merger with Allergan and Celgene, saw their 4Q sales by 59.2% and 40.5%.

Lilly, which remained at a growth rate of 5% until 3Q of last year, increased its growth to 21.7% in 4Q.

Followed by Lilly, Pfizer achieved double-digit growth with 11.8% and AstraZeneca with 11.2%, and Johnson & Johnson made 8.3%, Amgen 7.0%, and MSD 5.4%, leaving a fair performance even in the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, Novartis’ growth rate was only 3.0%, while GSK, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Gilead recorded negative growth rates.

Gilead added sales of the COVID-19 treatment Veklury during this period but suffered a slump with a negative growth rate of 7%.

Meanwhile, in the second half of the year, global Big Pharma is gradually behind the downturn, but the annual sales growth rate was still low.

Due to the merger and acquisition effect, BMS’s annual sales increased 64.1% and AbbVie’s 37.6%, but not the rest of the companies.

Lilly and AstraZeneca, which recorded double-digit growth in 4Q, grew nearly 10% with 9.9% and 9.2%, but Pfizer, which made double-digit growth in 4Q, only grew 1.8%.

Amgen’s growth rate was 8.8%, while Novo Nordisk’s growth rate was 4.0%, Novartis 2.6%, MSD 2.5%, GSK 2.0%, and Johnson & Johnson 0.6%. Roche shrunk by 5.1%, Gilead 2.6%, and Sanofi 0.2%.

Despite the low growth rate, the burden of research and development costs for many companies has increased.

Particularly, MSD’s R&D cost surged 129.1% in 4Q, BMS 78.8%, and Gilead 43.6%.

The R&D cost for Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and AbbVie also increased more than 20%, while GSK and Lily also showed double-digit growth.

Annually, BMS’s R&D cost rose by more than 80%, MSD 37.3%, Gilead 24.3%, GSK, and Pfizer 12.7% and 12.0%.

As a result, MSD’s R&D ratio to sales in 4Q was 46.7, a 25.2%p increase from the fourth quarter of 2019, and BMS also jumped 7.4%p to 35%.

Gilead also gained by more than 10%p from 19.0% to 29.3%, while GSK, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer also increased by more than 2%.

On the other hand, AstraZeneca, which had the highest R&D ratio of 31.4% in 4Q of 2019, plunged 8.2%p to 23.2%, and Novartis and AbbVie decreased more than 4%p, while Sanofi and Lilly’s R&D ratio was lower than that of 4Q. 

MSD soared 7.1%p to 28.2% annually, while Gilead also expanded more than 5%p from 18.3% to 23.4%.

Moreover, BMS rose 2.6%p, Pfizer 2.0%p, GSK and Roche 1.5%p, Johnson & Johnson 0.9%p, and Novo Nordisk 0.5%p.

Contrarily, AbbVie’s R&D fell by 5.0%p, AstraZeneca 2.3%p, Sanofi 1.4%p, Novartis 1.3%p, Amgen 1.1%p, and Lilly 0.3%p.

Hyeokgi Lee, Newsmp(newsmp@newsmp.com) 다른기사 보기