2024年生物制药行业回顾

2024Review The Long &Winding Road Foreword Foreword Biopharma experts knewthat 2024 was unlikely tobe the year that pharmacame roaring back in ablaze of mega-mergers, high profileIPOs and eye-watering privateinvestment rounds. And lookingback on the year, at least we can saywe didn’t get our hopes up toomuch, despite what looked like apromising start. Onto the better news: venture capitalfundraising for biopharma companies hada strong year end, boosting the year’s totalto over $28bn and beating 2023 and2022. There were even some mega-rounds for the industry to get excitedabout, including a $400m series A roundfor Kailera, a company focused on – youguessed it – obesity. Back with a bump,then though, as we look at a far fromvintage year for biotech in terms of stockperformance. Let’s start at the bottom and work our wayup: M&A. A busy first quarter sparkedhopes of a return to some dynamicdealmaking, but those hopes were soondashed. The rest of the year slithereddownhill with ever-reducing deal valuesand wasn’t even rescued by a Q4 surge aswe’d seen for the previous two years. Thebest that can be said of year end is thatdeal volume increased. Is pharma’s glass half full or half empty?Grab a (full) cup of coffee and let’s findout… In slightly better news, the IPO windowcreaked open a little further. Totalflotations hit 38 – up from 2023 and 2022,though well below the Covid-inspiredpeak that nearly blew the window off itshinges. There is no shortage of privatebiotechs looking to launch IPOs in 2025,but they need the fragile markets tostabilize and the global economy to settlebefore they take the plunge. But was 2024 a damp squib? Or was it asmuch as we could reasonably expect afterthe pain of 2023? In this round-up we lookat the dealmaking landscape of the past12 months, seek out the highs and lows,and consider what it means for the yearahead. Finally, we look at the dynamics of someof the drugs that hit the market in 2024.Recent themes remain apparent with biglaunches around metabolic disease andneurological conditions in the top 12 list.What’s most interesting, though, is thefact that half of those top launches do notsit with Big Pharma but instead with smallor first-time-to-market firms. For more timely, data-driven insights into thepharma market, checkoutScripandIn Vivo. M&A ValuesContinued ToDeclineDuring Q42024 Evaluate data show that thebiopharma industry made $9.5bnof acquisitions during the fourthquarter, a third consecutivequarter of decline, although dealvolume rose to 33 from Q3’s 29. M&A Values Continued To Decline During Q4 2024 Evaluate data show that the biopharma industry made $9.5bn of acquisitions during the fourth quarter, a thirdconsecutive quarter of decline, although deal volume rose to 33 from Q3’s 29. Although 2024 got off to a promisingstart with a busy first quarter, the fourthquarter marked the third consecutivequarter of declining biopharma merger-and-acquisition valuation. Evaluatereported that there were 33 M&A dealsduring Q4, up from 29 in the third quarter,but with a total valuation of slightly morethan $9.5bn, down substantially fromnearly $52.3bn in Q4 2023. Longboard Pharmaceuticals ended up thehighest-valued deal announced in the finalthree months of 2024. It was one of justthree acquisitions valued at $1bn or higherduring Q4. patent expirations, macroeconomicuncertainty, especially in the financialmarkets, and the looming presidentialelection held down activity as deep-pocketed players awaited a betterenvironment for placing higher-priced bets. supply issues for semaglutide-containingproducts such as Ozempic and Wegovy –skewed the Q1 dollar total. The transactionwas biopharmaceutical-adjacent, but notstrictly a pure-play biopharma deal. The first quarter of 2024 proved an outlier,as the industry made 54 M&A transactionswith a total valuation of nearly $37bn. Thatvaluation nearly equaled the slightly lessthan $40bn in acquisitions recorded overthe final nine months of 2024, but NovoHoldings’ $16.5bn acquisition of Catalent– a manufacturing-driven deal expectedto benefit Novo Nordisk by addressing its The biopharma sector did notapproach the Q1 deal volume or valuationtotals during the remainder of 2024,although a relatively healthy 38 takeoutsvalued at slightly more than $20bn wererecorded during the second quarter. In Q3,a clear decline in M&A activity was evident– while there were 29 M&A transactions,total value only reached $10.5bn. Biopharma M&A is expected to rebound in2025 and the year got off to a hot startwhen Johnson & Johnson agreed to buyIntra-Cellular for $14.6bn on 13 January,nearly tripling the price tag of the largesttakeout recorded during 2024, Vertex’s$4.9bn purchase of Alpine Immune in April. Industry watchers were ready with theirexplanations of why M&A activity hadcratered throughout 2024 when positiveconditions appeared in place for suchactivity – while potential buyers had bothcash and need to add pipeline assets tooffset coming r