Calcbench

As regular readers of this blog know, from time to time Calcbench examines the revenues that pharmaceutical companies receive from their so-called “blockbuster” drugs — that is, the companies’ biggest-selling products, which typically are reported as individual operating segments. Today we wanted to examine a bigger issue: the total portfolio of blockbuster drugs that pharmaceutical companies manage, and how those individual revenue streams evolve over time. That is, a pharma company might depend for years on one blockbuster drug, but as that product approaches the end of patent protection or faces new competition from a rival, the pharma company will need to bring new blockbusters to market to succeed the old one.  To explore that question, we looked at individual drug sales at four large pharma companies — AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer — from Q1 2020 to Q2 2025. The results are presented in four figures, below. First is AbbVie ($ABBV).  Next up is Johnso...

Today we have another update on corporate earnings from Q2 2025, and even at this early juncture — roughly 950 non-financial firms already reporting data, from an expected total of 3,400-ish by the end of earnings season in a few weeks — a clear story is starting to emerge. The largest of the large firms are doing great. Everyone else, only so-so.  Let’s start with total numbers overall. They are somewhat better than our first Q2 earnings update published last week thanks to a wave of rosy earnings releases this week, mostly from big tech companies. Revenue, operating income, and net income are all up by low- to mid-single digits — but operating and SG&A expenses are up too, both of them growing faster than revenue. Then again, cost of goods sold is growing more slowly than revenue, which is good; but only by a whisker, which is kinda sorta not good. Figure 1, below, shows everything in table format. The true story, however, is that only a handful of large, rapidly growing fir...