While Sanofi's influenza business did gangbusters in Europe for the last three months of the year, the situation was different in the U.S. as the shifting COVID-19 vaccination landscape fueled a meaty sales decline. Meanwhile, Sanofi is still underway with an aggressive effort to slim down—and more cuts are coming in 2022.
Worldwide, Sanofi’s flu shot sales dipped 12.4% for the fourth quarter, generating roughly 1.09 billion euros (about $1.24 billion). U.S. flu sales for the period sunk 48.3%. Sanofi flagged two exacerbating factors in the U.S., where its flu shot sales also slipped 13.6% for the full year: First, COVID-19 boosters took priority in November and December, relegating flu shots to the sidelines, Thomas Triomphe, Sanofi’s vaccine chief, said on Friday’s call.
Second, early vaccine shipments during the Northern Hemisphere’s flu season weighted sales toward the third quarter, Triomphe explained.
Meanwhile, Sanofi is continuing on its plans to slim down, execs said Friday. The company employed 96,000 people at the end of 2021, a 5% reduction versus 2020, according to an investor presentation.
This year, Sanofi plans to get that number down to 90,000 as part of its massive savings effort, CFO Jean-Baptiste Chasseloup de Chatillon told analysts. Part of the reduction in headcount includes the planned EUROAPI spinoff, which will employ 3,200 people. Still, Sanofi's ambition to slim down to 90,000 employees by the end of 2022 means the company still aims to reduce thousands of jobs.
“We are embracing digital change, streamlining our portfolio and collaborating with partners in geographies to balance and reduce infrastructure, while improving access to our medicines," Chasseloup de Chatillon said.
When he joined Sanofi in 2018, the company employed about 105,000 employees, Chasseloup de Chatillon pointed out. In all, the company will have cut about 15% of its employees over the entire cost-cutting span.
Across Sanofi’s entire business, fourth-quarter sales grew 4.1%, with specialty care charting the biggest contribution for the first time in the company’s history. It chalked up those gains to lead product Dupixent, which grew roughly 53% for the quarter.
For the full year, Sanofi's sales climbed 7.1% to 37.76 billion euros. Dupixent pulled in 5.25 billion euros (around $6 billion), while the company’s vaccines business generated 6.3 billion euros (about $7.2 billion), up about 7% for the full year.
Thanks to its strong Dupixent momentum, Sanofi has set the goal to "build the strongest franchise in immunology among big pharma," Chasseloup de Chatillon said last month at the 2022 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. That immunology build-out could be driven in part by M&A, the CFO suggested.
Separately, Sanofi on Thursday tweaked its corporate logo and websites, focusing its rebrand on a clean, lower case new logo with two purple dots at the start and end of its name. Sanofi has also moved the Sanofi Genzyme unit under the Sanofi branding, and the same goes for its vaccines unit, Sanofi Pasteur. All of its other buyouts will also use the new brand.
Editor's note: This story was updated with details about Sanofi's cost-cutting plan.