The Bigger Picture of Blockbuster Drug Sales

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 Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ). 



Third is Merck ($MRK).



And then Pfizer ($PFE).



What conclusions can we draw from these charts? A few points. 


  • Johnson & Johnson had the most diversified stream of blockbuster drug revenues. Its single biggest seller was Darzalex (a treatment for multiple myeloma), followed by Stelara, a treatment for psoriasis, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis. Drug revenues also accounted for a lower portion of total revenue at J&J (never more than 50 percent of total revenue) than at the other three pharma companies studied.

  • Pfizer saw a spike in revenue from the covid treatment Plaxlovid from mid-2022 into 2023, at one point accounting for nearly one-third of all blockbuster drug revenue in 2022. As the covid pandemic faded, however, Plaxlovid sales plummeted (down 95 percent by Q2 2025). 

  • AbbVie had the clearest example of ‘blockbuster shift.’ In Q3 2021, its arthritis drug Humira had $4.6 billion in sales, while its psoriasis treatment Skyrizi had only $679 million. In Q4 2024, Humira sales fell to $1.25 billion while Skyrizi soared to $3.3 billion.

  • Merck has seen revenue from its breast cancer treatment Keytruda march steadily upward, from $3.28 billion to $7.95 billion, the company’s biggest blockbuster by far.

Calcbench provides an easy way to search revenue by operating segments on our Segments, Rollforwards, and Breakouts page, so analysts following the pharma sector can quickly find the latest data available.


Plus, for Professional-level subscribers who have the Calcbench Excel Add-in installed, we also have a pharma industry template that automatically updates all the operating segment numbers as pharma companies file their earnings statements. Then you can spend even more time reading our blog as the data automatically flows to your desktop. Wins all around!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Amazon and Server Lifespans

So there we were the other day, skimming the latest from Deep Quarry , a newsletter on financial statement analysis written by accounting aficionado Olga Usvyatsky.  She had been picking apart Amazon.com’s latest quarterly report , and noted that the e-commerce giant had revised the useful life of certain servers and networking equipment downward from six to five years. That change, Usvyatsky noted, will have the practical effect of reducing 2025 operating income by $700 million. Moreover, Amazon ($AMZN) also decided to retire some equipment early; that led to $920 million in accelerated depreciation in Q4 2024 and will reduce 2025 operating income by another $600 million. Wait a minute. The useful life of computer servers, why does that sound familiar…  Because Calcbench wrote about that exact issue in 2021!  Back then, we noted that Google ($GOOG) and Microsoft ($MSFT) had both extended the estimated life of their computer servers from three years to four, which had t...
Read more

McDonalds versus Chipotle Earnings and KPIs

Image
This morning (July 29) , McDonalds reported Q2 earnings.  Last week (July 24th), Chipotle Mexican Grill did the same.   Since we have the financial data catchers mitt, we thought we would roll up the sleeves and get to work a little.   First question: 'How did the firms fare?'  A quick as-filed income statement should suffice: MCD: Sales Flat.  Profits Down.  But levels are high meaning they make a lot of Big Macs consistently.     CMG: Sales way up (18.3% YoY) and Profits as measured by Net Income up 33.3% YoY.  The business is objectively smaller than MCD though.  There are other ways to compare these firms and we love to talk about our ability to showcase the tools that allow for that comparison.   Using our earnings press-release toolkit allows us to compare things like Net Profit Margins in real time for these firms.  Like this quarterly since 2010:   In the last 10 plus quarters, McDonald's is 2-3 times more pro...
Read more

Inventory as a Non-Current Asset

Image
Most financial analysts think of inventory as a current asset, and in most cases you’d be correct — except for those cases where you’re not.  Turns out, more than a few companies disclose inventory as a non- current asset. The tricky part is that in many of those cases, the non-current inventory is added to “other assets.” You, the financial analyst on the outside, need to dig into the footnotes if you want to find that information.  Typically that would be a painstaking exercise — but fear not! XBRL is coming to the rescue with a dedicated XBRL tag, InventoryNoncurrent . That allows you to use Calcbench to find the item simply and quickly. So what is non-current inventory, anyway? One example of non-current inventory comes from Pfizer (PFE). The pharma giant reported $4.57 billion in non-current inventory at the end of 2023, compared to $10.19 billion of current inventory. The information was included in the Other Financial Information note, and included the following table ...
Read more