Novo Nordisk and Pfizer executives speak out

drug pricing. The looming patent cliff. Transaction completed. The first year of Trump 2.0.

These were among the themes that dominated the conversation last week at the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, where pharmaceutical companies of all sizes met with investors to plan for 2026 and beyond.

While geopolitical uncertainty weighed on deal deals in the first half of 2025, investors and pharmaceutical companies sounded optimistic that 2026 could be a turning point for the sector. Investors have shown signs of recovery in the U.S. biotech industry so far this year after years of uncertainty, and are hopeful that lower interest rates and a renewed appetite for deals will restart the IPO window.

The conference didn’t feature the flashy, big-ticket deals that usually dominate the venue. But big drug companies have said they are exploring potential acquisitions and partnerships to offset the potential loss of about $300 billion in revenue as patents on blockbuster drugs expire toward the end of the decade.

Some concerns about President Donald Trump’s health policy agenda have eased after more than a dozen major drug companies ended 2025 with a landmark drug price agreement and a three-year moratorium on tariffs.

Asked if he still held on to his prediction from last year that President Trump would be good for the industry, he said: pfizer “Yes,” CEO Albert Bourla told reporters last week, even though “it got pretty scary” along the way.

Still, investors are trying to understand how drug pricing agreements affect companies and parse the impact of policy changes such as loosening U.S. vaccine recommendations.

Here’s what we heard from pharmaceutical executives about the year ahead.

Some executives said recent drug pricing agreements, part of President Trump’s “most-favored-nation” policy, are likely to reduce uncertainty and have some impact on their businesses.

The agreement includes lowering the prices of certain products for Medicaid patients by matching them with the lowest foreign prices, and agreeing to sell some drugs at discounts on direct-to-consumer platforms, including the TrumpRx site the administration plans to launch.

“I don’t want to give the impression that there is no impact (from the most-favoured-nation agreement), because it does.” sanofi CEO Paul Hudson told reporters at a media event Wednesday morning. “The question for us is can we manage that and deliver an attractive long-term plan? So far, we feel we can do that.”

Several other companies that have price agreements with Sanofi are likely to outline how they expect the deal to affect their businesses when they release their 2026 outlook in the coming weeks.

AstraZeneca The company’s chief financial officer, Aradhana Sarin, said in a Jan. 13 presentation that the company expects the initial impact of the drug pricing agreement to be limited and manageable because so far it applies to a select Medicaid population and represents a “low single-digit percentage” of the company’s global sales.

Meanwhile, Bourla told reporters on January 12 that the deal would help companies pressure European countries to pay more for medicines, similar to how Britain agreed to raise drug prices as part of a trade deal with the United States in December.

He said companies could stop supplying medicines to some countries that refuse to make additional payments.

“Do we lower (US) prices to French levels or do we stop supplying to France? Do we stop supplying to France?” Bourla said. “So they will survive without new drugs…because the system will force us not to accept lower prices.”

Pharmaceutical companies focused on closing deals as a key tool to generate new revenue, confident that they could offset future losses from patent expirations on popular drugs. Cheaper generic versions of branded drugs are typically introduced to the market after their patents have expired, leading to significant price declines and loss of market share over time due to increased competition.

In the presentation on January 12th, Merck CEO Rob Davis said the company “wants to grow beyond” the upcoming loss of exclusivity for its best-selling cancer immunotherapy, Keytruda.

Merck raised its outlook for new products, saying they will contribute to a projected $70 billion in sales by the mid-2030s. That’s nearly double the numbers Wall Street expects Keytruda to record in 2028, before its patent expires. Keytruda had sales of $29.48 billion in 2024, nearly half of Merck’s total sales in that year.

Davis suggested the deal with Merck may not be completed, especially for late-stage or already approved products.

“From a dollar perspective, we’ve been looking at a range of up to $15 billion,” he said. “We have made it clear that we intend to expand further, but only with the same logic and discipline.”

bristol myers squib A note from JPMorgan analysts in late December said the company is most exposed to future cycles of loss of exclusivity, with blockbuster drugs like blood thinner Eliquis expected to face generic competition. Eliquis’ sales in 2024 were $13.3 billion, accounting for more than a quarter of the company’s revenue that year.

However, Bristol-Myers Squibb CEO Chris Boerner said in an interview on January 13 that the company could offer up to 10 new products by the end of 2010.

“We’re very happy with the boards that are in the late stages of development, and our mid-stage pipeline is progressing well,” he told CNBC.

Werner highlighted 11 late-stage data readouts across six potential new products in 2026. Werner said the company is “casting a wide net” in developing its business.

He added that Bristol-Myers Squibb wants to build on the core therapeutic areas it knows well, consider different stages of development, and focus on “the best and most innovative science we can discover” to tackle difficult-to-treat diseases.

this year, novo nordisk The company is also facing patent expirations for semaglutide, the active ingredient in blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic and obesity drug Wigovy, in certain countries, including Canada and China.

Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doester said 2026 “will be a year of price pressure” due to generic competition in some international markets and the U.S. drug price agreement. He added that Novo Nordisk aims to offset price cuts with increased volumes and will be proactive in business development to see what “can complement our pipeline.”

The comments come after Novo Nordisk lost a fierce bidding war to Pfizer last year over obesity biotech Metsala.

Some executives echoed concerns about the administration’s changes to U.S. vaccination policy by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, and his appointees. This includes recent moves by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce the number of vaccinations routinely recommended for children.

“It’s very upsetting, very disappointing,” Pfizer’s Bourla said, adding: “There’s no scientific value to what’s happening, it’s just serving a political purpose.”

He added: “I think it’s true that vaccination rates among children are going down and that can lead to disease. I’m convinced of that.” But Bourla said he doesn’t think recent changes to the pediatric vaccination schedule will impact Pfizer’s revenue.

He said the pressure the administration is putting on vaccinations is “an extraordinary situation that will correct itself.”

Meanwhile, Sanofi’s Hudson said the Trump administration’s scrutiny of the vaccine is consistent with what the company expected ahead of the 2024 election.

“As I have discussed with Mr. Kennedy, we are simply trying to stick to the facts of the evidence,” Hudson said. “There’s not much we can do.

“I just hope that ultimately the evidence is sufficient for all of these things,” he added.