What is Bristol-Myers Squibb’s History?

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company is a global biopharmaceutical company. The Company develops, licenses, manufactures, markets, and sells pharmaceutical and nutritional products. Bristol Myers Squibb focuses on products and experimental therapies address cancer, heart disease, HIV and AIDS, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis, organ transplant rejection, and psychiatric disorders.

What Bristol-Myers Squibb is doing in more details?

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) offers drugs such as Eliquis for stroke prevention, cancer treatment Opdivo, and rheumatoid arthritis treatment Orencia. Most of the firm’s sales come from products in the areas of hematology, oncology, cardiovascular, fibrosis, and immunology.

BMS has global research facilities and manufacturing plants, mainly in the America, Europe and Asia. The US accounts for over 60% of sales. In 2020, BMS completed the acquisition of MyoKardia for approximately $13.1 billion in cash.

Where Bristol-Myers Squibb is Operating?

BMS operates in one segment: Biopharmaceuticals. The company has five blockbuster drugs experiencing growing sales. An oral immunomodulatory drug Revlimid treats multiple myeloma offers about $12 billion or over 25% of sales.

An oral Factor Xa inhibitor, targeted at stroke prevention in adult patients with NVAF and the prevention and treatment of VTE disorders Eliquis brings in about $9 billion and anti-cancer indications including bladder, blood, colon, head and neck, kidney, liver, lung, melanoma and stomach Opdivo brings in nearly $7 billion in sales, or about 20% of annual revenue, each.

Rheumatoid arthritis drug Orencia earns about $3 billion and myeloma medication Pomalyst/Imnovidl earns about $3 billion (about 7% of sales each).

Established brands include Baraclude, Vidaza and other brands generate about 5%.

BMS’ R&D efforts are focused on medicines that address serious unmet medical needs, with a special emphasis on immuno-oncology and other cancer therapies.

Other core therapeutic areas include immunoscience (especially lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease), cardiovascular care (heart disease), and fibrotic disease (lung and liver).

Where is the geographical reach of Bristol-Myers Squibb?

While New York City-based BMS serves a global customer base, the US market accounts for about 60% of its annual revenue. Europe accounts for about 25% of sales, rest of the world and other generate more than 15% of sales.

The company operates over 200 manufacturing, R&D, administration, storage and distribution sites around the globe. BMS has five significant manufacturing sites in the US and two in Europe. It has around 10 major research and development facilities in the US and one in Europe.

What is Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Sales and Marketing Strategy?

US wholesale drug distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen together account for about 65% of BMS’ annual sales. In addition to wholesalers, the company also sells some products directly to customers including hospitals, clinics, government agencies, retailers, and pharmacies.

BMS employs a direct sales force to promote products to doctors, pharmacists, nurses, physician assistants, hospitals, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and managed-care organizations (MCOs).

The company also uses television, radio, print, and digital advertising and promotion activities to market its products to consumers.

Advertising and product promotion costs are included in marketing, selling and administrative expenses and were $990 million in 2020, $633 million in 2019, and $672 million in 2018.

What is Bristol-Myers Squibb Financial Performance?

BMS has seen steady revenue growth over the past five years with a growth of over 100% between 2016 and 2020. On the other hand, net income has been volatile for the last five years with a recorded net loss in 2020.

The company reported a 63% revenue increase in 2020 to some $42.5 billion impacted by an increase from Revlimid, Pomalyst/Imnovid and other Celgene products of $10.7 billion, which contributed 69% of the growth, and higher demand for Eliquis.

The company recorded a net loss of $9 billion in 2020 compared to a net income of $3.5 billion in 2019.

The company ended 2020 with $15.0 billion in cash, up $2.2 billion from 2019.

Operating activities contributed $14.1 billion, while investing activities used $10.9 billion (mostly acquisition and other payments, net of cash acquired), and financing activities used $1.2 billion for payments of dividends.

What is Bristol-Myers Squibb Future Strategy?

BMS’s strategy is to combine the resources, scale and capability of a pharmaceutical company with the speed and focus on innovation of the biotech industry.

Its focus as a biopharmaceutical company is on discovering, developing and delivering transformational medicines for patients facing serious diseases in areas where it believes that the company has an opportunity to make a meaningful difference: oncology (both solid tumors and hematology), immunology, cardiovascular and fibrosis.

BMS’s four strategic priorities as a combined company are to drive enterprise performance, maximize the value of its commercial portfolio, ensure the long-term sustainability of its pipeline through combined internal and external innovation and establish its new culture and embed its people strategy.

While BMS is committed to reducing its debt, the company plans to remain focused on broadening its portfolio of marketed medicines and pipeline assets.

What are Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Mergers and Acquisitions?

In late 2020, BMS completed the acquisition of MyoKardia, Inc. in an all cash transaction for approximately $13.1 billion.

With the completion of the acquisition, MyoKardia shares have ceased trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market and MyoKardia is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bristol Myers Squibb.

Through the transaction with MyoKardia, Bristol Myers Squibb gains mavacamten, a potential first-in-class cardiovascular medicine for the treatment of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (“HCM”), a chronic heart disease with high morbidity and patient impact.

What is Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Background?

Squibb was founded by Dr. Edward Squibb in New York City in 1858. Bristol-Myers was founded as Clinton Pharmaceutical in Clinton, New York, in 1887 by William Bristol and John Myers to sell bulk pharmaceuticals.

Bristol-Myers Squibb was formed through the merger of Bristol-Myers and Squibb in 1989. The firm was renamed after its founders in 1900. In 1929, the company was publicly held on the New York Exchange company.

What is Bristol-Myers Squibb’s History?

Bristol-Myers Squibb is the product of a merger of rivals.

Squibb was founded by Dr. Edward Squibb in New York City in 1858. He developed techniques for making pure ether and chloroform; he turned the business over to his sons in 1891.

Sales of $414,000 in 1904 grew to $13 million by 1928. The company supplied penicillin and morphine during WWII.

In 1952 it was bought by Mathieson Chemical, which in turn was bought by Olin Industries in 1953, forming Olin Mathieson Chemical. Squibb maintained its separate identity.

From 1968 to 1971 Olin Mathieson went through repeated reorganizations and adopted the Squibb name. Capoten and Corgard, two major cardiovascular drugs, were introduced in the late 1970s.

Capoten was the first drug engineered to attack a specific disease-causing mechanism. Squibb formed a joint venture with Denmark’s Novo (now Novo Nordisk) in 1982 to sell insulin.

William Bristol and John Myers founded Clinton Pharmaceutical in Clinton, New York, in 1887 (renamed Bristol-Myers in 1900) to sell bulk pharmaceuticals. The firm made antibiotics after the 1943 purchase of Cheplin Biological Labs.

It began expanding overseas in the 1950s and eventually bought Clairol (1959); Mead Johnson (drugs, infant and nutritional formula; 1967); and Zimmer (orthopedic implants, 1972). Bristol-Myers launched new drugs to treat cancer (Platinol, 1978) and anxiety (BuSpar, 1986).

That year it acquired biotech companies Oncogen and Genetic Systems.

The firm bought Squibb in 1989, creating Bristol-Myers Squibb. In 1990 the new company bought arthroscopy products and implant business lines and joined Eastman Kodak and Elf Aquitaine to develop new heart drugs in 1993.

Despite these initiatives, earnings slipped. In 1994 company veteran Charles Heimbold became CEO and moved to increase profits. BMS in 1995 bought wound and skin care products firm Calgon Vestal Laboratories.

Also that year the company, along with fellow silicone breast implant makers 3M and Baxter International, agreed to settle thousands of personal injury claims at an average of $26,000 per claim.

Facing an antitrust suit filed by independent drugstores, BMS and other major drugmakers agreed in 1996 to charge pharmacies the same prices as managed care groups for medications. That year the company formed a generic drug unit and launched Pravachol.

Over the next two years BMS tweaked its product line, buying drug, cosmetics, and consumer products companies and brands. Having refined its product line, the firm began a series of officer reassignments that were widely interpreted as an effort to find a successor for Heimbold, who retired in 2001.

In 1999 the firm pulled its backing for EntreMed after the biotech had problems duplicating results for a cancer drug candidate.

BMS helped market promising diabetes drug Avandia (from GlaxoSmithKline, which ended the deal in 2002) and teamed with Millennium Pharmaceuticals to study the genetic makeup of tumors.

As the company entered the 21st century, it began streamlining. It sold its Sea Breeze skin care brand (1999); Matrix Essentials hair care products unit (2000); and Clairol hair and personal care products business (2001). BMS also spun off its Zimmer orthopedic implant unit in 2001.

More changes came in 2004: The firm sold its Mead Johnson Adult Nutritional business.

In 2002 BMS was dealt a blow when a judge ruled that the company had illegally blocked Mylan Labs and Watson Pharmaceuticals from selling generic versions of BuSpar.

The firm bought a 20% stake in ImClone to collaborate on the development of cancer drug Erbitux and to stay on top of the cancer drug market.

Instead, BMS found itself embroiled in the controversy over insider information and stock deals surrounding the biotech. Persistence paid off, however; Erbitux was approved by the FDA in 2004.

During 2005, the company cleaned out parts of its medicine cabinet. Analgesics Excedrin and Bufferin had made the company a household name, but in 2005 the company sold its US and Canadian consumer products operations to Novartis.

The deal also meant saying goodbye to such brands as Comtrex (cold medications), Choice (blood sugar monitoring supplies), and Keri (lotions, skin care). Sales for the its US and Canadian consumer products operations reached about $270 million in 2004.

That same year, BMS sold Oncology Therapeutics Network, which distributes cancer drugs to oncology doctors, to private equity firm One Equity Partners. The unit had accounted for about 13% of sales in 2004.

As part of an agreement with the New Jersey US Attorney’s office in 2005 to settle an investigation into inventory control and accounting practices, the company split the role of chairman and CEO into two separate offices.

Long-time BMS director James Robinson III was elected the company’s new chairman, with Peter Dolan in the CEO role. James Cornelius took over as CEO in 2006 and became chairman in 2008, bring the two roles back together.

While the patent expiration on blockbuster Plavix was still five years off, in mid-2006 Canadian generics maker Apotex managed to flood the market with a generic version of Plavix for several weeks.

The release of the drug followed bungled attempts by BMS to negotiate a deal with Apotex that would have kept it off the market.

The debacle led to federal investigations into whether that deal violated anti-trust laws (among other things) and also resulted in the ouster of CEO Peter Dolan (replaced by James Cornelius).

Though a judge put a halt to the manufacturing of the generic until the courts could straighten the whole thing out, the short-term generic competition hurt Plavix sales to the tune of more than $1 billion.

BMS ultimately wound up paying more than $150 million to settle lawsuits and agreed that it would report any future deals struck with generics makers.

The company announced a reorganizational plan in 2007 named the string-of-pearls strategy. As part of its efforts to remake itself into a purely biopharmaceutical player, BMS began jettisoning its non-pharmaceutical businesses.

During 2008 the company sold its Medical Imaging unit to private equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $525 million, and Avista Capital Partners and Nordic Capital paid $4.1 billion to acquire BMS’ ConvaTec ostomy and wound-care subsidiary.

Then in 2009 the company divested its Mead Johnson subsidiary, which sold Enfamil infant formula and other nutritional products for children.

BMS sold its pipeline of investigational HIV medications to ViiV Healthcare in 2016 to focus on core development efforts.