In her inaugural earnings call as the new CEO of Sanofi, Belén Garijo—until recently head honcho at Germany’s Merck KGaA—laid out her ambitions for the French pharma juggernaut, plainly addressing the issues that have tripped the company up in recent years, alongside the strengths that could help carry it forward.
“Over the past 12 weeks, I have listened, I have learned, and I have completed the critical phase of my diagnosis,” Garijo said at the top of Sanofi’s Q2 earnings call Thursday, noting that the company has already started putting many of those conclusions into actionable decisions.
“Our teams continue to deliver quarter over quarter, as seen by the results,” she said. “At the same time, I have to fully recognize the challenges confronting us and the need to build strategy that delivers on mid- and long-term growth.”
By the numbers, Sanofi had a stellar second quarter, in which sales of more than 11.5 billion euros (around $13.4 billion) came out 8% ahead of consensus forecasts, according to Jefferies analysts on Thursday. They credited that momentum in large part to a 16% beat by immunology megablockbuster Dupixent, co-marketed with Regeneron, which grew nearly 38% year over year in Q2 to reach sales (PDF) of 5.2 billion euros (nearly $6 billion).
Still, Sanofi leadership—and investors—know that the company can’t ride the high of Dupixent forever, and efforts to, in Garijo’s own words, look ‘deeply’ at the company’s pipeline and assess its internal and external innovation calculus are influenced in large part by that eventuality.
The exact timing of when Dupixent could fall prey to biosimilars remains uncertain, Sanofi leadership explained on Thursday’s call, with its general counsel Roy Papatheodorou pointing out that the company has “patent expiration dates going up to 2046”—despite general expectations that that biosimilars could start hitting the scene in the U.S. by early next decade.
While it’s “too early to speculate on specific dates for biosimilar entry,” Papatheodorou said that based on Sanofi’s own reading of the situation, “we do expect Dupixent to be protected beyond March 2031.”
While much could still change between now and then, Sanofi’s top lawyer said that “we have done our best to make sure that the years of innovation are being protected, and we intend to really fight it out.”
Meanwhile, after meeting with Sanofi employees, pouring over the company’s science and talking to stakeholders over the past three months, Garijo said on Thursday that her goal is to “foster a performance-driven culture, greater accountability” and “an ecosystem where people are empowered to make more agile decisions.”
While much of that focus hinges on fine tuning Sanofi’s R&D engine—which has been saddled with multiple recent high-profile setbacks—Garijo also pointed to the need to play up on commercial strengths it already has in place with established drugs like Dupixent, while also taking the opportunity to “capitalize on our local footprint in a deglobalizing market, one with greater accountability, and empower country leadership,” which she suggested could “contribute to decomplexify the organization and eventually allow us to move with more activity.”
While that seems to suggest layoffs may be on the horizon, Sanofi’s CFO François Roger told Fierce on a media call earlier in the day—in relation to a question about pipeline changes specifically—that the company doesn’t “have restructuring plans per se that we are working on,” instead pointing to “many initiatives of cost efficiencies across the organization.”
Alongside pledges to keep efforts focused on immunology, rare diseases and vaccines, Garijo noted that, as far as the firm’s global footprint is concerned, the company will further build out its capabilities in Europe and the U.S. while looking to continue expanding its presence in Japan and China, pointing to the recent appointment of Sanofi’s vaccine chief Thomas Triomphe to oversee that China push.
Garijo also addressed the future of Sanofi’s long-term collaboration with Regeneron, with whom the French pharma shares megablockbuster Dupixent, with that particular partnership currently the subject of a lawsuit by Regeneron accusing Sanofi of refusing to share certain commercialization details on the asset.
Describing Sanofi’s relationship with Regeneron as “close to my heart,” Garijo stressed that the arrangement “is of strategic importance for Sanofi,” adding that attempts to find avenues for further collaboration “have been productive.”
“These conversations are ongoing and will continue in order to determine the best path forward for both Sanofi and Regeneron.”
When pressed during the Q&A portion of an analyst call on the relationship between that Regeneron litigation and the timing of updates on the partners’ broader plans, Manuella Buxo, Sanofi’s new head of specialty care, suggested that the “litigation focuses on a narrow issue concerning information sharing.” She added that “the most important thing and the focus of the alliance is maximizing the opportunity with Dupixent, and which we’re already doing, as you can see in our Q2 results.”
Despite the eventual need to hew away from Dupixent, Sanofi still has big ambitions for the drug’s ongoing sales trajectory, and now expects Dupixent to reach revenues around 25 billion euros in 2030, up from a previous projection of around 22 billion euros.
Meanwhile, Sanofi’s confidence that it can achieve around 10 billion euros from its stable of new pharmaceutical launches by that same year “remains unchanged,” CFO Roger said on the call.
On the other hand, Sanofi has downgraded its 2030 sales ambitions for its vaccine unit by 1 billion euros to a projected 9 billion euro haul to kick off the next decade.
The company is raising its overall sales guidance for 2026 as well, with the expectation that sales will now grow around 10% at constant currencies, improving on a prior prediction for high single-digit growth this year.
Garijo will certainly have her work cut out demonstrating that she can lead Sanofi in a positive new direction. And while it could just be investor jitters to coincide with the CEO’s first earnings call at the helm, Sanofi’s stock was trading down nearly 7% by about 11:00 am ET on Thursday, July 30.