Over the past 10 years, the ten largest biopharma companies grew their sales by ~$160B.

But how did some, like BMS & AbbVie, grow much more than others?

BMS and AbbVie took very different routes to achieve their growth.

AbbVie's growth was driven by the fact Humira powered above even the loftiest initial expectations:

When AbbVie was spun off from Abbott into an independent public company in 2012, the consensus view was Humira sales would peak at ~$12B by the time it lost exclusivity in 2016.

Both those assumptions were massively understated: Humira only faced competition in 2023, and when it did, it was doing $21B+ in annual sales, almost 2x the forecast at the time.

While Humira no doubt powered much of AbbVie's growth, M&A also played a role, particularly its mega-deal with Allergan in 2020.

For BMS, it was the transformational Celgene deal in 2019 that essentially doubled the size of the company.

But while both approaches achieved overall growth, they had very different outcomes for shareholders: while AbbVie's stock has tripled over the past 10 years, BMS's is up just under 20%.

Looking at the picture more broadly, while a 10-year snapshot provides good context, it leaves out many twists and turns that happened along the way.

Notably, Pfizer's sales surged past $80B in 2021 on the back of strong covid-related product sales, yet returned to Earth by 2023.

As the industry navigates upcoming LOEs on several key drugs, it must ensure that any M&A is done at reasonable valuations, because as history shows, growth for growth's sake will result in subpar returns.