SAN FRANCISCO — Christopher Boerner has been the CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb for just two months. But in trying to sell the company to investors on Monday at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, he pointed to the company’s 150-year history.
He spoke of the “next chapter” for BMS, which saw its stock fall 27% last year, and said that the company would be going through a “period of renewal.” Basically, the tide comes in, but it also goes out. Patents on big-selling medicines expire, but new medicines will come to take their place.
Investors may not be able to view those changes with equanimity. Sales of Bristol’s top sellers will decline significantly or vanish as generic or biosimilar medicines emerge. That includes Eliquis, the blood thinner for stroke prevention that will be one of the first medications subject to price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act; Revlimid, the best-selling multiple myeloma medicine that Bristol acquired when it bought Celgene for $74 billion in 2019; and Opdivo, Bristol’s pioneering cancer immunotherapy, which is an $8 billion seller.