Roland Berger advises Pharma, Life Science and MedTech companies on how to master the challenges of the future.
Global Pharma Study 2025 – how to thrive in times of radical uncertainty
Winning companies lead the way in resilience
The Roland Berger Global Pharma Study 2025 analyzes the performance of the 163 largest publicly traded companies and identifies “winners” with above-average profitability and revenue growth. They are leading the way as the industry moves from the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 and supply-chain disruptions to radical uncertainties about global tariffs and US drug pricing, the rise of personalized medicines, and the cost of AI adoption.
The cumulative total shareholder returns of the companies in our study dropped below the S&P 500 in July 2025 – the first time since our tracking began in 2020 that they fell behind overall stock-market trends. Between 2021 and 2024, the industry fell short of traditional expectations of annual revenue growth, a pattern that has intensified with new tariffs and potential drug-pricing constraints. Despite these uncertainties, companies continue to spend record amounts on research and development (R&D). This shows they can no longer simply keep boosting investment - they must quickly optimize R&D efficiency and effectiveness.
"Pharma winners combine disciplined R&D, strategic focus, and operational efficiency to drive above-average growth and profitability, positioning themselves to lead the industry through unprecedented challenges and radical uncertainty."
At a time when traditional certainties are under pressure, the publication identifies pharma industry “winners” with above-average profitability and revenue growth that can show their peers the way. Winners saw average revenue growth of 12% from 2021 to 2024, focused on selected disease areas, and prioritized key brands for commercialization. They managed R&D with discipline, investing 20% of revenues and complementing this with an average of 5.4 M&A deals. By contrast, underperformers spent only 13% on R&D and completed 4.2 deals.
Winning pharma companies focus sharply on select therapeutic areas to realize above-market growth to continuously optimize costs across R&D, production and commercial operations. This gives winners an edge in tackling the five overarching challenges facing the industry: proactively managing US drug-price cuts and global trade tensions that threaten profitability; rebalancing R&D through in-house excellence and M&A to ensure both disease-area focus and platform-driven innovation; developing innovative, outcome-based funding models for personalized therapies; building a robust data foundation to scale AI from supply chains to production and sales & marketing; and creating an agile, adaptable, and resilient corporate organization to prepare for the unexpected. By showing how winners achieve success, the publication identifies strategies for the whole industry.
Nine of ten segments produced winners between 2021 and 2024. Diversified life sciences-focused companies, traditional biotech, the generics and biosimilars segment, consumer health, and digital health saw an increase in the proportion of winning companies compared with 2020–2023. Three segments — CDMOs/CMOs, blood-plasma companies, and new-modality biotechs — experienced sharp declines, while the small molecules segment saw no change. Diversified life sciences–and-beyond companies once again produced no winners.
Winning companies were most prevalent in traditional biotech, contract development and manufacturing (CDMO/CMO), and the generics and biosimilars segment, underscoring the importance of combining cutting-edge innovation with efficient, end-to-end operations and processes. Winners recorded a significantly lower cost of goods sold (COGS) – 27% versus 39% for underperformers – and higher capital expenditures, at 8% of revenues compared with 5%. As a result, they were more profitable, earning an average EBITDA of 35% versus 26%.
The report identifies what sets winners apart from "value generators" with high profitability, but low revenue growth; "profitless growers" with low profitability, but high revenue growth; and "underperformers" with low profitability and low revenue growth:
- business leadership, which allows winners to set the agenda in their area of the pharma market
- strategic coherence across their business portfolio
- a proven ability to execute, which enables them to reliably deliver results
- financial strength allowing ready access to capital
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