Johnson & Johnson has had the year 2025 circled, highlighted, bolded and underlined on its calendar for a long time. Why? Because patent exclusivity for Stelara, its longtime top-selling drug that treats psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease, expired this year, allowing so-called \u201cbiosimilars\u201d to hit the market.<\/p>\n
In turn, the company has embraced acquisitions to keep its pipeline flowing. On Monday, it announced an agreement to pay $3.1 billion for Halda Therapeutics, a company specializing in prostate cancer treatments.<\/p>\n
SUBSCRIBE:\u00a0 Receive more of our free The Daily Upside<\/a> newsletter. READ ALSO:\u00a0Boom in Crypto Treasury Stocks Faces Inevitable Bust\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sun Belt Housing Market too Hot to Touch for First-Time Buyers<\/a><\/p>\n In its third-quarter earnings statement last month, J&J said that sales of Stelara had plummeted 41% year-over-year to $1.5 billion worldwide. But the company defied expectations, as overall sales continue to climb. \u201cNo other healthcare company has grown through the loss of exclusivity of a multibillion-dollar product in the first year,\u201d CEO Joaquin Duato said during an earnings call this summer.<\/p>\n And now, like its big biotech peers, J&J is doubling down on M&A to shore up its pipeline:<\/p>\n \u201c[The Halda] acquisition further strengthens our deep oncology pipeline with an exciting lead asset in prostate cancer and a platform capable of treating multiple cancers and diseases beyond oncology,\u201d Jennifer Taubert, worldwide chairman for J&J\u2019s innovative medicine division, said in a statement Monday. Halda\u2019s pipeline complements J&J\u2019s existing oncology portfolio, which generated more than $6 billion in global sales in its most recent quarter.<\/p>\n In addition to Halda, J&J acquired neuroscience drug developer Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6 billion in January. It remains one of the blockbuster moves of the year, along with last week\u2019s $9.2 billion acquisition of flu treatment company Cidara by Merck, and Pfizer\u2019s $10 billion purchase of obesity drugmaker Metsera.<\/p>\n Chip Dip: The loss of Stelara wasn\u2019t the only headwind slamming J&J this year. Like the rest of the industry, the company grappled with an onslaught of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. But even that gale-force headwind seems to be fading: Last month, the administration struck tariff-exemption deals with Pfizer and AstraZeneca. The news, along with this year\u2019s dealmaking boom, has stoked significant investor interest in the biotech sector. State Street\u2019s SPDR S&P Biotech ETF has climbed about 26% since the start of September, while the overall S&P 500 has risen just 4%. Our diagnosis? Bubble or not, there\u2019s some comfort to be had outside the AI boom.<\/p>\n This post first appeared on The Daily Upside<\/a>. To receive delivering razor sharp analysis and perspective on all things finance, economics, and markets, subscribe to our free The Daily Upside<\/a> newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnson & Johnson has had the year 2025 circled, highlighted, bolded and underlined on its calendar for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[88273,103,397,396,61,6417,60,14174,88272],"class_list":{"0":"post-156555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-halda","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-health-care","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-inflammatory-bowel-disease","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-johnson-johnson","16":"tag-stelara"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}