The global pharmaceutical industry seems to be heading for a period of hard times looking at the performance figures of top 15 companies during 2015. The Pharmabiz study of financial results of these companies show that their total revenue remained stagnant for the first time at US$ 501 billion during the year 2015 with no growth at all over the previous year. Declining of profitability of these companies to a level of 4.5 per cent of the total revenue during the year is yet another disturbing trend. Sales of pharmaceuticals and vaccine of these 15 companies increased just 0.7 per cent to $435 billion in 2015 from $432 billion in previous year. Amongst the 15 companies, Novartis remained on top in pharma sales with $49.4 billion followed by Pfizer at $48.8 billion and Sanofi at $37.7 billion during 2015. However, sales of Novartis declined by 5.3 per cent, Pfizer's by 1.5 per cent and Sanofi's by 2 per cent during 2015 over the previous year. Merck, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Teva Pharma and Eli Lilly are others which reported a drop in sales during 2015.Gilead Science and AbbVie are the only two companies which registered double digit sales growth of 31.4 per cent and 14.8 per cent at $32.15 billion and $22.81 billion during 2015. Although overall sales growth of these top companies remained static, in the US market their sales of pharmaceuticals and vaccines increased by 8.6 per cent to $20.8 billion from $19.2 billion in the previous year. And Pfizer remained the market leader in the US market followed by Gilead Sciences.
One of the major reasons for the drop in sales of pharmaceuticals and vaccines of top global companies is the loss of patents of quite a few products in the recent years and a resultant increase in sales of generics in the US and European markets. After the expiry of Lipitor patent in 2010, a number of patents of several other blockbusters got expired in the subsequent years. Generic companies got benefited substantially from this trend helping them to push up sales both in the emerging and developed markets. Increasing preference for quality generic drugs for their efficacy and price is going to remain world over in the years to come posing a permanent threat to brand companies. Drop in sales of 42 blockbusters out of a total of 95 blockbusters of the 15 companies during 2015 is yet another worrying issue to these companies. In spite of all these negative factors around, it is surprising that top pharmaceutical companies are in no hurry to invest in new molecular research. The R&D expenditure of 15 companies increased only by 1.7 per cent during 2015 over the previous year. In fact, research expenditure of top companies like Pfizer, Novartis, Roche, Merck, Sanofi, GSK, Amgen and Novo Nordisk declined during 2015. This is a matter of serious concern not only for the pharmaceutical companies but also for millions of patients especially at a time several of the old drugs are turning ineffective and new diseases with no drugs to treat are emerging worldwide.