Dive Brief:
- Sanofi is planning layoffs as its core diabetes business has come under tremendous pressure, according to Stat News. Not only does the French drugmaker face biosimilar competition by year end to its top-selling insulin Lantus, but payers have been demanding steep discounting.
- Labor unions are particularly strong in Sanofi’s home base of France, meaning more U.S. workers may face losing their jobs.
- Sanofi also faces pricing pressure against its PCSK9 cholesterol drug, Praluent, which it co-developed with Regeneron.
Dive Insight:
Sanofi is being squeezed. Its established diabetes business is under pressure, while Praluent has been heavily discounted. At the beginning of the year, the company pulled out of its co-development deal with Mannkind as Afrezza has struggled. The jointly developed inhalable insulin notched a disappointing $5 million Euros in sales over the first nine months of 2015.
Under the leadership of newcomer CEO Olivier Brandicourt, Sanofi now plans to lay off workers as part of a larger reorganization project. The company employs 110,000 workers worldwide, 17,000 of them in the U.S.
Post-reorg, the company will try to implement cost-savings of $1.6 billion by 2018. Sanofi's business units were restructured to now include general medicine and emerging markets, specialty care, diabetes and cardiovascular, and the Sanofi Pasteur vaccines unit.
The company will report 2015 year end results on February 9th.