The report on the world’s largest manufacturers was compiled by IndustryWeek 1000 and ranked public manufacturers based on their 2012 revenues.
Not surprisingly, the top ten was dominated by oil companies – Royal Dutch Shell keeping the topspot for a second year – with Pharma’s first appearance all the way down in position 60 with Johnson & Johnson reporting sales of $67bn.
However, when taking account the $14.4bn worth of consumer goods J&J sold last year, according to its annual report, the healthcare company drops down into third on the pharma list, putting Pfizer back in the position it is akin to being.
Therefore, ignoring J&J the top ten look like the graph below:
The difference in revenue between Pfizer and Novartis stands at a mere $240m, and though both companies reported negative growth figures (see chart below) the gap was narrowed due to a 12.5% fall in revenue on Pfizer’s side.
Though all Big Pharma has been affected by patent expiration, Pfizer lost exclusivity on its cholesterol drug Lipitor in 2011 leading to a 55% drop in year-to-year sales, and an over-capacity in its manufacturing operations.
The complete list of the top ten pharma manufacturers, with overall world ranking for both this year and last is as below: