Magazine
Spinning the Tops
Who made the leap from 2001 to 2006?
I keep a lot of souvenirs and mementoes. Old baseball tickets, 2002 Nets playoff towels, photos from the cities we visit for conferences, a list of all the books I've finished since 1989, postcards from my friends' travels, mix-tapes (then mix-CDs, then iTunes playlists), hastily scrawled notes that seemed important at the time. I like to look back and try to get an impression of who I was, what the times were, and what we were missing. Someday, I even plan on updating that photo on this page (which dates back to September 1999).
In the midst of compiling this year's Top Companies Report, I decided to look back at the year we began it: 2001. It was fascinating to look at just the top-line numbers (pharma revenues) to see what they said about the industry in 2000 and 2005. A glance at the charts below will give you a clear idea of what I mean. It’s hard to imagine a time this decade when Pfizer wasn’t #1, but it happened (you can blame exchange rates), and Lipitor sold ‘only’ $5.0 billion that year (up 33% from 1999).
Take a look: the 'going rate' for #1 is now nearly double what it was only five years earlier. The #2 company has almost 50% more revenues than 2000’s, while #3 is almost 100% larger. The #4 company on this year's list is bigger than the #1 company in the 2001 edition. There’s no denying the "economies of scale" that have taken over the Top Pharma race (check out which names have disappeared in the mists of M&A). Net earnings gives us a slightly different picture but it’s too subject to one-year vagaries and extraordinary items, as our Financial Analyst discusses in our print edition.
| Top 20 Pharma 2001 |
Top 20 Pharma 2006 |
||
| based on 2000 pharma revenues ($ in billions) |
based on 2005 pharma revenues ($ in billions) |
||
| 1. GlaxoSmithKline | $23.5 |
1. Pfizer | $44.3 |
| 2. Pfizer | $22.6 |
2. Sanofi-Aventis | $34.0 |
| 3. Merck & Co. |
$18.6 |
3. GlaxoSmithKline | $34.0 |
| 4. AstraZeneca | $15.7 |
4. AstraZeneca | $24.0 |
| 5. Aventis | $15.2 |
5. Johnson & Johnson |
$22.3 |
| 6. Bristol-Myers Squibb |
$14.4 |
6. Merck & Co. | $21.9 |
| 7. Johnson & Johnson |
$12.0 |
7. Novartis | $20.3 |
| 8. Novartis | $10.9 |
8. Roche | $16.6 |
| 9. Pharmacia | $10.8 |
9. Bristol-Myers Squibb | $15.3 |
| 10. American Home Products |
$10.8 |
10. Wyeth | $14.3 |
| 11. Eli Lilly & Co. |
$10.2 |
11. Eli Lilly & Co. | $13.8 |
| 12. Roche |
$8.6 |
12. Abbott Labs | $13.3 |
| 13. Schering-Plough |
$8.3 |
13. Boehringer-Ingelheim | $9.0 |
| 14. Bayer |
$5.5 |
14. Takeda | $9.0 |
| 15. Takeda |
$5.2 |
15. Schering-Plough | $8.8 |
| 16. Sanofi-Synthelabo |
$5.0 |
16. Astellas Pharma |
$7.5 |
| 17. Boehringer-Ingelheim |
$4.5 |
17. Daiichi-Sankyo | $6.9 |
| 18. Abbott Labs |
$4.0 |
18. Novo Nordisk |
$5.6 |
| 19. Sankyo |
$3.8 |
19. Eisai | $5.1 |
| 20. Shionogi |
$2.8 |
20. Bayer AG | $5.0 |
It's also interesting to note which companies have made The Leap and which haven't. Roche -— barely in the Top 12 in 2001 -— is surging, while Neighbor Novartis nearly doubled its pharma revenues. On the other hand, Schering-Plough was battered by the loss of Claritin and compliance issues, and barely has higher revenues now than it did five years ago. BMS, knocking on the door of the Top 5 in the 2001 edition, could slide out of the Top 10 in another year or two. Lilly, however, has managed to hold its place at #11 despite the loss of Prozac.
Merck, meanwhile, was surging in 2001. Sure, the company faced a number of patent expirations in the 2000-01 span, but Merck would be able to handle it, thanks in part to its new COX-2 inhibitor, which managed $2.2 billion in sales in its first full year . . .
