Novartis Sneaking Up on Pfizer For Pharma's Top Spot

By Dan Stanton

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Pfizer

Novartis Sneaking Up on Pfizer For Pharma's Top Spot
Pfizer has remained the world’s largest public manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, according to an industry report, though dropped revenue in 2012 has left Novartis hot on its heels.

The report on the world’s largest manufacturers was compiled by IndustryWeek 1000​ and ranked public manufacturers based on their 2012 revenues.

Not surprisingly, the top ten was dominated by oil companies – Royal Dutch Shell keeping the topspot for a second year – with Pharma’s first appearance all the way down in position 60 with Johnson & Johnson reporting sales of $67bn.

However, when taking account the $14.4bn worth of consumer goods J&J sold last year, according to its annual report​, the healthcare company drops down into third on the pharma list, putting Pfizer back in the position it is akin to being.

Therefore, ignoring J&J the top ten look like the graph below:

revenues

The difference in revenue between Pfizer and Novartis stands at a mere $240m, and though both companies reported negative growth figures (see chart below) the gap was narrowed due to a 12.5% fall in revenue on Pfizer’s side.

Though all Big Pharma has been affected by patent expiration, Pfizer lost exclusivity on its cholesterol drug Lipitor in 2011 leading to a 55% drop in year-to-year sales​, and an over-capacity in its manufacturing operations.

growth

The complete list of the top ten pharma manufacturers, with overall world ranking for both this year and last is as below:

Company

Revenue (Millions)

Revenue growth (%)

Rank

Rank Last year

Pfizer Inc.

US

$58,986

-12.52

70

55

Novartis AG

Switzerland

$58,748

-3.26

71

61

Roche Holding Ltd.

Switzerland

$51,755

7.55

85

93

Sanofi

France

$48,134

3.23

89

98

Merck & Co. Inc.

US

$47,267

-1.62

94

89

GlaxoSmithKline PLC

UK

$44,025

-1.19

100

105

Abbott Laboratories

US

$39,874

2.63

110

118

AstraZeneca PLC

UK

$28,943

-15.79

157

131

Alfresa Holding Corp.

Japan

$27,090

6.87

166

155

Eli Lilly & Co.

US

$22,603

-6.93

203

174

Johnson & Johnson (unadjusted)

US

$67,224

3.37

60

58

Johnson & Johnson (Adjusted)

US

$52,777

60

 

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