Once again, the pharma industry starts a new year with hopes of a recovery. Will 2025 finally see a return of IPOs? Of mega-mergers? Of huge rounds of investment? Perhaps, but more likely this year will simply be a few steps in the right direction. There is still a great deal of uncertainty, particularly around market conditions and the political climate but at least with a big election year out of the way, things might – possibly – stabilise.

The year ahead is the focus of a webinar I’m taking part in on 23rd January. It’s based on Evaluate’s latest report, the 2025 Preview, which takes a data-driven look at the year ahead, using 2025 pharma industry forecasts. We’ll use the webinar to take a quick spin through the report data, which includes forecasts of the top-selling drugs in 2025 and the biggest companies by revenue, as well as a look at the biggest potential launches of the year.

However, all that data is in the report, which you can read at your leisure, so my fellow panellists and I will be talking more broadly about what the data mean for the market, the challenges facing some of the biggest players, what the year may hold for deal making, and much more. We’ve just had a planning session for the webinar, so I thought I’d share a few things you can expect to hear in the conversation.

1. Dealmaking. There’s plenty of money still in the market but it isn’t being deployed in great quantities and deals were somewhat thin on the ground last year. Furthermore, no deal was worth more than $5bn – modest by pharma standards. That figure has already been beaten by the $14.6bn J&J/Intra-Cellular deal announced at JP Morgan. We’ll talk about what may revive dealmaking, and the therapy areas and modalities that will get the cogs of dealmaking turning again. With loss of exclusivity looming for several mega-blockbusters and the peak year for Keytruda looming, there’s a lot to cover.
2. Going it alone? Partially because of the lack of M&A activity, we’re seeing more small companies moving towards commercialising new therapies themselves. Only two of the top-10 biggest potential launches are from smaller players this year, but given that half of 2024’s biggest launches were from small or first-time-to-market firms, we’ll discuss if this is the shape of things to come.
3. The role of China. We’ve had several questions in advance about the changing role of China in pharma. We’re certainly starting to see a shift in this dynamic as recognition of the speed and scale of the biotech scene grows, with several licensing deals already announced in 2025. How these moves will be viewed by the new Trump administration is yet to be determined, but no doubt that will come up in the debate!

If that’s not enough, we’ll also pick up some of the highlights from the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. I’ll be joined on the panel by Norstella’s Daniel Chancellor and Scrip’s Alexandra Shimmings and I’m looking forward to a fascinating discussion. The webinar takes place on 23rd January at 3pm GMT/10am EST and you can claim your spot here.

I hope you see you there!