After its sudden rise and precipitous fall during the COVID-19 pandemic, Emergent BioSolutions is taking measured steps as it attempts to reestablish its unique role as a drug developer combating urgent public health threats.
Wednesday during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the Maryland company, which CEO Joseph Papa said is in the “very first stage of a turnaround,” laid out its plan.
“We are focused on first stabilizing the company, then turning it around and ultimately transforming the company. It’s a multiyear process,” added Papa, who took the reins of Emergent in February 2024.
One of its small steps came Tuesday when the company revealed that it has gained exclusive commercial rights in the U.S. and Canada to Kloxxado, an emergency nasal spray for opioid overdose, from Hikma Pharmaceuticals.
Emergent will couple Kloxxado with its top-selling product, Narcan (naloxone), also an opioid nasal spray. While Narcan is a 4-mg dose of naloxone, Kloxxado is the 8-mg version of the same compound.
“We think we can broaden the availability of naloxone by putting it through our Narcan network,” Papa said. “We have 18,000 distribution points that we ship product to.”
The CEO said Kloxxado takes on added importance because of the rise of overdoses by use of fentanyl, which can be better combated by Kloxxado due to fentanyl’s high potency.
Papa added that there’s plenty of government funding available for Narcan and Kloxxado. A chunk of pharma companies' roughly $50 billion opioid settlements is being designated for the acquisition of products to counter opioid overdoses.
Emergent’s other primary focus area is on medical countermeasures against threats such as anthrax, smallpox and mpox, with those initiatives receiving “strong bipartisan support from Congress,” according to Papa.
In stabilizing Emergent, the company achieved several milestones in the first three quarters of 2024, Papa said, including the reduction of its net debt by more than $200 million through divestments—including the sale of its fill-finish Baltimore-Camden plant for $30 million to Bora Pharmaceuticals—and by reducing working capital by $100 million through efficiency tweaks. During the first three quarters of 2024, Emergent reported a 10% increase in revenue to $849 million.
In short, the company is looking to regain its momentum by taking advantage of what Papa described as a “very significant moat around this business.”
“You can’t just simply access smallpox and go to your garage and create a smallpox vaccine,” Papa said. “It really requires very specific protocols and approvals by the U.S. government and governments around the world. That’s why we think we’re unique.”