Evaluate Pharma predicts a $981-billion global pharma market for 2021, up 14.3%

Following the tumult of the 2020 pandemic—now leaking well into 2021—the market research firm Evaluate Pharma projects a healthy growth for the current year, based on data collected during the first half of 2021. It remains to be seen whether the renewed infection rates, spurred by the Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus, will suppress that projected 2021 growth.

Evaluate Pharma’s report, World Preview 2021 Outlook to 2026, presents high-level summaries of data the Evaluate Pharma produces and publishes during the year. Among other highlights:

• Global sales of pharma products will reach $1.4 trillion in 2026, with orphan drugs doubling to $268 billion by then. Also in that year, biotech products will account for more than half of the top 100 medicines by sales; biotech, overall, will represent 37% of the total sales, compared to 30% in 2020.
• The Covid-19 vaccine market, which went from nothing to tens of billions in sales in 2021, will wane in the coming years but continue to generate revenue even in the late 2020s. Pfizer will have accumulated $51 billion in sales over the next five years, but half of that was earned in 2021 alone. Similar declines are expected for the other commonly known vaccines (J&J, AstraZeneca, Moderna), while a yet-to-be-authorized entry from Novavax could be a leader in 2026.
• The ranking of top pharma companies by sales will reshuffle by 2026, with the leaders (in order) of AbbVie, Roche, Novartis, J&J and Sanofi. Pfizer will fall to No. 6, and Bristol Myers Squibb to No. 7. AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline round out the top 10.
• Merck’s Keytruda oncology product is expected to overtake AbbVie’s Humira immunosuppressant in 2023 as the world’s top-selling medicine (which is also the year Humira is expected to lose US exclusivity). Keytruda sales will grow from $14.4 billion in 2020 to $26.9 billion in 2026.