The hits just keep on coming for Bristol Myers Squibb staffers amid the company's cost-savings program.
The drugmaker is laying off an additional 79 staffers in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, according (PDF) to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN). The company confirmed the cuts, which will be effective between Dec. 12 and May 30 of next year.
BMS did not reveal which employees will be affected or where the cuts will take place between its two sites in Lawrenceville. The company’s setup there includes its corporate headquarters on Route 206 and its Princeton Pike location, three miles away, which houses BMS’ commercial and late-stage development teams.
The drugmaker confirmed that the dismissals are part of a savings drive, which was revealed during its first-quarter earnings presentation in April and is designed to reduce costs by $1.5 billion by the end of 2025. When it announced the plan, BMS said it expected around 2,200 roles to be chopped in 2024, which would reduce its head count by 6%.
The “majority” of the savings from the Strategic Productivity Initiative—as it has been dubbed by the company—“will be reinvested to fund innovation and drive growth,” a BMS spokesperson wrote in an email Friday.
“As part of this initiative, the company is focusing resources on R&D programs with the potential to deliver the greatest return on investment, prioritizing investing in key growth brands and optimizing operations across the organizations,” BMS' spokesperson added.
In April, Chief Financial Officer David Elkins said about two-thirds of the savings would come from R&D spending. Chief Medical Officer Samit Hirawat, M.D., added that BMS was ending work on about a dozen clinical programs.
The new round of pink slips brings the company’s layoff count in Lawrenceville to 1,134 this year, including a purge of 863 that was revealed in a WARN filing in May.
In March, the company also confirmed that it was cutting 252 staffers from its San Diego-based subsidiary Mirati Therapeutics. BMS wasted little time executing the layoffs after it closed its $4.8 billion acquisition of the cancer specialist in January.
The reductions come as the company faces pressure from forthcoming patent expirations for Pfizer-partnered blood thinner Eliquis and PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo. Additionally, Eliquis is subject to a Medicare price adjustment under the Inflation Reduction Act starting in 2026. As the business challenges mount, BMS has embarked on a dealmaking streak, striking three acquisitions worth a combined $23 billion, including the Mirati deal.
BMS is not the only large pharma company that has retooled its business this year.
Pfizer has embarked on a quest to save $4 billion by the end of this year. In May, the company unveiled another savings initiative that will take place over multiple years. Novartis, Bayer, Takeda and Biogen have also undertaken savings campaigns that have involved layoffs.