Dive Brief:
- Gilead is the most efficient company of 2014, with each of its 7,000 full-time employees generating an average of $3.5 million, according to an annual jobs report from EP Vantage and Evaluate Pharma.
- Excluding big pharma companies, Baxter was the biggest hirer of the last five years, followed by Actavis and Valeant.
- The most active companies in terms of M&A are specialty companies, including Teva (which is trying to buy Mylan, which in turn is trying to buy Perrigo); Actavis, which bought Allergan and Forest Labs; and Valeant, which bought Salix and Bausch & Lomb.
Dive Insight:
EvaluatePharma took a look at the industry and came up with a number of broad takeways, including the fact that mid-cap specialty companies and biotech companies are more efficient than Big Pharma with respect to earnings per employee. In terms of this type of efficiency, Gilead is ranked first, followed by Celgene, Shire, Biogen, and Amgen in the top five slots.
In terms of the biggest hirers (excluding Big Pharma) Bayer came in first with a total of 5,700 new employees added for a total headcount of 118,900, while Baxter, Mylan, Novo Nordisk and Activis ranked second through fourth in terms of new hires.
While some of the report's findings were easy to understand, like the fact that Gilead's successful, rapid launch of Sovaldi and Harvoni helped put it in the top spot, other aspects were not as intuitive. For example, although Alexion has the most expensive drug in the world (Soliris), it is not terribly efficient, according to the report, with just $1 million in sales per employee, putting it in the sixth spot.
As might be expected, some of the larger companies facing large-scale patent expiries have had to cut their sales forces in the U.S over the last several years., with the most significant employee headcount roll-backs occuring at Merck (headcount was down 8% in 2014); Bristol-Myers Squibb (head count is down almost 50% in the last 10 years); and AstraZeneca—which is an interesting story, because after years of cutting employees the company actually increased headcount by 12%.
The EvaluatePharma report is a treasure trove of useful insights, expected takeaways and counterintuitive a-ah moments. Go here to learn more about this report.