Narrowing to rare disease, urology and haematology (2019)

Choosing again what was already in hand

What the company declared it would narrow to was, in truth, what half a century had left in its hands. From Eviprostat in 1967 to Estracyt capsules in 1984, urology and haematology products had accumulated without a break in ground the large firms did not treat as their main battlefield. What the sixth mid-term plan of 2019 did was add intractable and rare disease to that thin territory and announce publicly that research resources would be moved there. In an environment of repeated drug-price revisions, where it could not fight the majors head-on, this looks like a decision not to buy something new but to re-select what it already owned.

Five years on, the figures have not caught up with the declaration. Revenue of $978.9M (¥148bn), operating profit of $219.8M (¥33bn) and profit of $171M (¥26bn) all came in below the targets set. What beat its target was functional foods — the business deliberately left outside the narrowing. And earnings over the same period were carried not only by drugs the company sold itself but by profit from Uptravi, which it had entrusted to another firm. That the seventh mid-term plan reorganized the priority fields into three is a sign that the line drawn in 2019 is not yet settled.