French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi announced at an investor research and development day held in New York on December 7th that the company is developing 12 "blockbuster drugs" with annual sales potential exceeding $1 billion.
However, due to the company's lack of specific expectations for short-term profits brought by the new drug, Sanofi's stock price did not reverse its decline on that day. On October 27th, Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson unexpectedly abandoned the company's profit target of 32% for 2025, triggering panic selling in the market. In the past two months, Sanofi's stock price has fallen by about 20%.
In response to Sanofi's release on Investor Development Day, an investor told a reporter from First Financial News, "I believe their direction is correct, but in the process of communicating with investors, there is still a lack of specific details. They should explain their strategy more clearly and eliminate market panic."
The 12 candidate drugs announced by Sanofi in the pipeline include 9 immunotherapy drugs and 3 vaccines. Sanofi stated that each of these drugs has a peak sales potential of € 2 billion to € 5 billion ($2.2 billion to $5.4 billion), with 3 of them potentially exceeding € 5 billion in peak sales.
Specifically, the drugs in these pipelines include tolebrutinib for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, lunsekimig and rilzabutinib for the treatment of asthma, itepekimab for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and candidate vaccines for acne, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in the elderly, and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli.
Sanofi predicts that the peak sales potential of the eczema drug amlitelimab, frexalimab for treating multiple sclerosis, and an oral soluble TNFR1 inhibitor will exceed 5 billion euros.
The company claims that by 2030, new drugs launched in the near future will generate annual sales of over 10 billion euros; Considering its recently launched RSV vaccine, Sanofi's vaccine business is expected to reach similar revenue levels by 2030. Its best-selling anti-inflammatory drug, Dupixent, is expected to be used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and is expected to achieve double-digit annual sales growth by 2030.
Sanofi also announced that it will invest more energy and focus on research and development, with the goal of increasing the number of Phase III clinical trials by 50% between 2023 and 2025. It plans to conduct 25 mid to late stage clinical trials in the next two years and submit 20 new drug application plans to regulatory authorities.
According to financial report data, Sanofi's R&D expenditure in 2022 was 6.7 billion euros (7.2 billion US dollars), accounting for 15.6% of the group's sales, which is lower than the industry average of around 20%.
Hudson stated that the cost of conducting drug trials for Sanofi next year will increase by nearly 700 million euros, and long-term research and development investment may increase by 1 billion euros compared to the level in 2023. He also expressed that Sanofi hopes to become a leading enterprise in the fields of immunology and neurology.
In addition to strengthening research and development, like many pharmaceutical giants, Sanofi also considers acquisitions as an important part of its strategy. In March of this year, Sanofi announced its acquisition of American biopharmaceutical company Prevention Bio for $2.9 billion. Through this acquisition, Sanofi will obtain a new type 1 diabetes treatment. Prevention Bio also brings synergistic effects to the early development of Sanofi immune mediated disease drugs.
Sanofi is still betting on the application of AI in the field of new drug discovery. Recently, Sanofi signed a $140 million agreement with French AI pharmaceutical company Aqemia, hoping to change the drug development landscape, strengthen new drug discovery and compound optimization, and accelerate the development process of innovative therapies.