Overview

A rapidly changing healthcare environment and the convergence of breakthrough scientific innovation, digital advancements, increasing global access and new business models are reshaping the biopharma space. These advancements offer promise for substantial improvement in patient care and have opened up new opportunities for players in biopharma and across the life sciences market landscape.

With these new opportunities come several new challenges, including increased pricing pressure, uncertain market access dynamics, evolving consumer behavior and disruption from nontraditional healthcare players. These trends are forcing biopharma companies to think strategically about which aspects of their current business they want to invest in and which new avenues of growth they will need to explore.

At L.E.K., we help biotech and pharmaceutical executives develop practical strategies and plans to win in this evolving landscape, thereby improving outcomes for patients and maximizing the value of a dynamic global healthcare market.

How we help

We work with biopharma companies at all stages of development, providing an array of solutions to help our clients navigate key uncertainties and drive long-term value creation for their shareholders. This includes emerging and established players and companies focused on innovative branded drugs, as well as those focused on biosimilars, generics or reformulations.

Our end-to-end offering can provide support at all stages of a product or company’s development, including:

  • Early-stage products and/or companies: L.E.K. can help early-stage companies focus their growth strategy by evaluating the potential of the company’s pipeline, prioritizing portfolio investments and supporting go/no-go decisions. We can also help companies think about financing opportunities and conduct unbiased product or market evaluations to support partnership or investment decisions. With our experience and analytical support, biopharma companies can gain the confidence required to make important decisions in the face of a great deal of uncertainty.
  • Products in later-stage development: Getting a launch right is critical, especially if a company is entering a new disease area or launching its flagship product. L.E.K. teams up with clients at this stage to provide commercialization strategies and launch planning support. In concert with our healthcare services practice, we are able to help develop pricing, access and customer engagement strategies that help position products for maximum success. We have demonstrated success supporting biopharma companies in all key geographies, and our commercial planning expertise cuts across all types of drugs, devices and diagnostics. In addition to helping define the commercialization strategy, we also have a great deal of experience helping emerging companies scale up their organization to prepare for the launch process.
  • Companies poised to grow global operations: In addition to maximizing the potential of their marketed products, biopharma companies must also think about what’s next. Whether it’s building franchise leadership, developing life-cycle management plans, driving growth across therapeutic franchises, evaluating attractive adjacencies for M&A, determining how to scale the team or prioritizing internal pipeline opportunities, our team has a proven track record of helping our clients build winning strategies unique to their particular challenges.
  • Companies looking to execute value-creating deals: We support our clients at every stage of the deal life cycle from search and evaluation to execution and post-transaction integration. We have helped our life sciences clients execute more than $140 billion worth of transactions including in-licensing, out-licensing, strategic partnerships, M&A, joint ventures, divestitures and royalty monetization transactions.

Examples of our work

We have worked with hundreds of pharmaceutical executives to drive dramatic shareholder value creation.

  • Transformative business development: A global pharmaceutical company was facing a revenue cliff as a result of the impending loss of exclusivity of a number of its key products. L.E.K. helped avert this crisis by developing a more aggressive strategy and designing an innovative business development process and organizational structure. This resulted in the company completing 12+ transactions in 18 months, increasing revenue by more than 20%, adding more than 30% to its market cap and transforming its growth trajectory.
  • Business model innovation: An orphan drug company with a clinical-stage product was unsure of which indications and geographic markets would provide the greatest value. We evaluated and prioritized potential indications for the drug through discussion with key industry experts. Moreover, using our global networks and knowledge of foreign markets, we helped the company navigate foreign regulatory landscapes, introduce regional partners and experts, and develop a go-to-market strategy and launch plan. In the end, the company improved its share price by nearly 400% in a year.
  • Brand revitalization: A product launched by a major biotech company was significantly underperforming, hurting brand image and potentially future franchise performance. Using a combination of advanced analytical techniques, L.E.K. helped the company identify the true drivers of underperformance and develop a strategy to revitalize product sales. By targeting these drivers, the company grew product sales by nearly 10 times over the next four years and successfully launched follow-on products and services that further elevated the franchise.
  • Turnaround strategy: An oncology-focused biotech company was struggling to maximize the value of its marketed products while also realizing the potential of its promising pipeline. The client’s operating plan was projected to exhaust its cash reserves inside of two years, and thus an actionable strategy was needed that could drive value quickly. L.E.K. helped this client identify some of the key drivers of its commercial success, divest some of its European operations, reallocate funding to the highest-ROI pipeline opportunities and right-size operating costs. This resulted in a multipronged turnaround strategy, which ultimately culminated with a large transaction and a market-cap increase of more than five times in less than 12 months.
  • Scale up for success: A biopharma company was attempting to transform from an R&D platform into a fully integrated commercial biopharma enterprise. With L.E.K.’s support, the company developed an organizational vision and a strategic road map to more than quadruple its workforce in preparation for launch. In addition, we helped it prioritize its product pipeline and optimize the organizational structure and resource allocation across geographies. As a result, the company has successfully launched its first product, built out a first-class organization, steadily increased its value and is in the process of bringing other novel therapies to market.

How do we help clients achieve high-impact results?

Learn about how we can help you with your Life Sciences & Pharma needs.