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Report Scope
This report discusses the implications of all the above-mentioned trends in the context of the current size and growth of the market for generic drugs, both in global terms and broken down by the most important national markets. The nature and structure of the generic drug industry is discussed, with profiles of the leading 20+ generic drug companies and an update on M&A activity. Five-year sales forecasts are provided for the national markets and the major therapeutic categories of the products involved.
Based on geography, the market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World. Detailed analyses of major countries such as the U.S., Canada, Germany, the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Japan, China and India are covered in regional segments. For market estimates, data has been provided for the year 2019 as the base year, with forecasts for 2020 through 2025. The estimated values used are based on drug manufacturers’ total revenues. Projected and forecasted revenue values are in constant U.S. dollars that have not been adjusted for inflation.
Report Includes
- 38 tables
- An updated review of the global market for generic drugs
- Analyses of the global market trends, with data from 2018-2020, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2025
- Highlights of current and future market potential of generic drugs along with an emphasis on the major generics issue, regulatory landscape and patent cliff within the generic drugs industry
- COVID-19 impact (both short term vs. long term) on the global generic drugs market compared to the overall pharmaceutical industry
- Estimation of the market size and market forecast for pharmaceuticals and generic drugs by the most important geographies and major therapeutic categories of products
- Key M&A deals, collaborations and partnerships, licensing and manufacturing agreements, and other investment strategies within this market
- Competitive landscape of the key players in the global generic drugs market, analysis of company sales data, and structure of the generics industry
- Insight into the pipeline analysis of new and generic drugs and their impact on the growth of the market
- Company profiles of the leading players operating in global generic drugs market including Aspen, Cipla, Lupin, Pfizer, Sanofi, Sun Pharmaceuticals and Teva Pharmaceuticals
Summary
This report is being published at a time when the pharmaceutical industry faces challenges and changes more radical than any it has faced in the last half-century. The worldwide economic recession in 2008 has had a profound impact on an industry that is normally resilient to the usual ups and downs of commercial life. Apart from the sometimes-painful process of cutting costs and restructuring, the industry has had to confront the fact that its trading environment has fundamentally changed because all its customers are now aware of prices.
At this critical time, the pharmaceutical world has also endured a phase for which the label “patent cliff” was coined. A stream of blockbuster drugs has begun losing their patent protection, and R&D pipelines have not been able to produce a satisfactory supply of replacements. The doors have been thrown open to generic drug producers to do what they do best: provide low-cost alternatives.
And there is an added complexity. Over the past two decades, advances in biotechnology have led to the introduction of a generation of biotherapeutic agents that are often more efficacious than traditional small-molecule drugs at treating their target diseases. The earliest of these biotherapeutics are now losing their patent protection, and this offers yet another opportunity for generic copies—although this is a technically fraught area, as will be seen. In fact, the challenges facing “originator” companies—the major purveyors of own-brand pharmaceuticals—are matched by those confronting generic drug suppliers.
Suppliers of generic drugs relied initially on low cost as their main market advantage. It became a potent argument, as the government health departments in most European countries operating national health schemes began to introduce measures designed to curb pharmaceutical expenditure. In the U.S., developments in managed care had a similar effect. Everywhere, these cost-cutting exercises favored generics.
However, the low-cost argument that had been the generic products’ main rationale acted against the commercial promise of this industry sector. This occurred partly because the attractiveness (and thus high-volume sales potential) of blockbuster drugs remained in place after these drugs lost their patent cover. Generic drug companies vied with each other to introduce low-cost copies, and they were driven to undercut each other to the point where a year after patent expiry on the original brand, the mean price of copy products was merely 20% or less of the original.
Partly, too, generic price competition was fueled by government reimbursement measures, which favored low-cost drugs and thus tended to trigger further price cutting among the generic drug contenders.
This development had two far-reaching effects. First, it began to weed out the weaker generic drug companies in favor of companies that had the means and the resolve to exist in an environment where profit margins were severely cut, sometimes to less than 10%. One of the survival strategies adopted by these manufacturers has been to widen their appeal beyond mere cost-cutting, to include, for example, “super generics” products with added value, often in the form of special delivery formulations.