Ianalumab

Novartis said Friday that last year was one of its “strongest” financial performances in its history following a multiyear reorg as a pure-play pharma company, bolstered by steady growth of its top three medicines and a skyrocketing cholesterol franchise. CEO Vas Narasimhan said on a media call that the company exceeded its full-year guidance for both sales and operating income. The Swiss drugmaker’s 2024 sales grew 12% to $45.4 billion, according to an earnings release . The update was not a complete surprise, because the company upped its sales guidance through 2028 in November. Novartis’ cholesterol drug Leqvio saw the most growth in 2024, with sales soaring 112% to $754 million. But its top three best sellers were heart failure medicine Entresto ($7.8 billion), psoriasis treatment Cosentyx ($6.1 billion) and multiple sclerosis drug Kesimpta ($3.2 billion). In 2023, the company completed a long-term restructuring process that saw it integrate its pharmaceuticals and oncology business units into a so-called innovative medicines unit, and zero in on four core therapeutic areas: cardiovascular, renal and metabolic (CRM), as well as oncology, immunology and neuroscience. “When you look at [this change] from a value creation standpoint, in January 2018 the market capitalization of Novartis was $196 billion, and you can see today that [it] stands at over $200 billion,” Narasimhan said on the second media call. “The strategy of focusing the company has unlocked value and actually enabled Novartis to be much stronger for the long run.” Last year, the drugmaker slashed the size of its development and commercial functions with an eye to a leaner structure that would allow it to focus on “the biggest opportunities” in its pipeline. It’s targeting 15 new launches or label expansions over the next few years, starting with a potential indication for its immunoglobulin A nephropathy drug Fabhalta. The factor B inhibitor was due for an FDA adcomm meeting next month to discuss its risk-benefit profile in C3 glomerulopathy, but the agency called the meeting off earlier this week. “Our understanding is that the FDA no longer deemed it necessary to hold an advisory committee meeting,” Narasimhan told reporters. “We think it’s based on the overall data package we’ve been able to generate and the additional follow-on data that we’ve provided.” Narasimhan also stressed that Novartis remains a leader in the radiopharmaceutical space, with close to $2 billion in yearly sales from radioligand products, a global manufacturing footprint and more than 15 assets in the clinic using lutetium or actinium isotopes. The company made several investments in the approach last year, including a $1 billion bet on Mariana Oncology. Novartis plans to carry on with this kind of dealmaking , Narasimhan said. “But I think it’s really important to note that right now, lutetium is the isotope that has the most data and is the only approved isotope,” he continued, adding that newer isotopes such as actinium and lead have yet to demonstrate the necessary risk-benefit profile for approval and broad use. Also on the call, the company’s chief medical officer Shreeram Aradhye said it had discontinued development of a Phase 2 candidate for Sjögren’s syndrome. Novartis dropped work on anti-CD40 antibody iscalimab because its risk-benefit profile to date was not competitive, Aradhye said. But the company is still advancing another antibody program for Sjögren’s called ianalumab. In 2022, the drugmaker gave up on advancing iscalimab for liver transplant patients for similar reasons. Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add more comments from the company’s calls.

Vas Narasimhan, chief executive officer of Novartis AG, speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan. At the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference 2025, Narsimhan talked about how Novartis is optimistic its streamlined portfolio will fuel high growth in the next five years and into the 2030. Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg via Getty Images Positioning itself as a pure-play innovative medicines company, Novartis is bullish about the growth towards 2030 by placing an emphasis on a streamlined portfolio to drive sales, says CEO Vas Narasimhan. Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan outlined projections for the company’s future at the 2025 JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco on 14 January. Novartis, he said, expects peak sales of over $3bn for its eight leading branded products which, along with promising growth in China and Japan, which will fuel the company’s revenues throughout the next decade. Chief among these drugs are Cosentyx (secukinumab) and Kisqali (ribociclib succinate), each projected by Novartis to generate peak sales of over $8bn. Alongside these, the company identified four drugs in clinical development, which it expects to drive growth in the 2030s; remibrutinib, OAV101 IT, and ianalumab, all in Phase III trials, and pelacarsen, currently in a Phase II trial (NCT04023552) for aortic valve stenosis. Narasimhan said Novartis expects 15 submission-enabling data readouts in the next two years from their core assets, which will maintain profits in the face of patent expiries for their current blockbuster drugs. Patent expiries of major drugs have been a key issue for big pharma, and is expected to be a major macroeconomic trend affecting the sector this year, as per GlobalData’s State of the BioPharmaceutical Industry 2025 report . GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology . This in turn has increased the scrutiny on companies’ research and development strategies. Novartis has refocussed its clinical pipeline, moving from 155 active projects in Q3 2021 to 94 in Q3 2024. This, Narasimhan says, has allowed Novartis during this period to invest 49% more full-time equivalent (FTE) per project—the ratio of working hours spent on R&D. The company will continue focusing on four core therapeutic areas-cardiovascular-renal-metabolic, immunology, neuroscience and oncology. The company now expects a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 6% between 2023 and 2028 with roughly similar growth projected for 2029 and beyond. Much of this growth is likely to be found in East Asian markets such as China, where Novartis achieved over 25% growth in sales during 2024, as well as Japan where Narasimhan stated regulatory reforms will aid the company. With an emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) integration in its R&D and implementation of its fast-to-IND strategy for preclinical assets, Novartis has over 30 potentially high-value new molecular entity (NME) candidates in clinical Phases I-III, which Narasimhan said are set to drive long term revenue growth. The therapeutic areas of focus for the company include immunology, in which Novartis expects over six Phase III and over 10 Phase II readouts in the next five years, and gene therapies, driven by recent acquisitions like Kate Biotherapeutics, which acquired for $1.1bn in November 2024.