Novartis and Pfizer are among the companies best positioned to take advantage of future biosimilars disruption in the pharmaceuticals industry, our analysis shows.

The assessment comes from GlobalData’s Thematic Research ecosystem, which ranks companies on a scale of 1–5 based on their likelihood to tackle challenges like biosimilars and emerge as long-term winners of the pharmaceuticals sector. Yesterday (19 January), using the same Thematic Research ecosystem, Clinical Trials Arena revealed the top pharma companies best equipped with artificial intelligence.

According to our analysis, Novartis, Pfizer, Catalent, Amgen, Biogen, Patheon, Shanghai Henlius Biotech, Viatris, Celltrion, and Samsung Bioepis are the companies best positioned to benefit from investments in biosimilars, all of them recording scores of 5 out of 5 in GlobalData’s drug development Thematic Scorecard.

Novartis, for example, has advertised for 406 new biosimilars jobs from January 2021 to December 2021 and mentioned biosimilars in company filings 119 times.

Pfizer indicated good levels of AI investment, with the company looking for 101 new biosimilars jobs since January 2021, completing one deal and mentioning biosimilars in filings 80 times.

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The table below shows how GlobalData analysts scored the biggest companies in the pharmaceuticals industry on their biosimilars performance, as well as the number of new biosimilars jobs, deals, patents, and mentions in company reports since January 2021.

The final column in the table represents the overall score given to that company when it comes to their current biosimilars position relative to their peers. A score of 5 indicates that a company is a dominant player in this space, while companies that score less than 3 are vulnerable to being left behind. These can be read fairly straightforwardly.

The other datapoints in the table are more nuanced, showcasing recent biosimilars investment across a range of areas over the past year. These metrics give an indication of whether biosimilars is at the top of executives’ minds now, but high numbers in these fields are just as likely to represent desperate attempts to catch-up as they are genuine strength in biosimilars.

For example, a high number of mentions of biosimilars in quarterly company filings could indicate either the company is reaping the rewards of previous investments, or it needs to invest more to catch up with the rest of the industry. Similarly, a high number of deals could indicate that a company is dominating the market, or that it is using mergers and acquisitions to fill in gaps in its offering.

This article is based on GlobalData research figures as of 13 January 2022. For more up-to-date figures, check the GlobalData website.