Marginalized Apc

Marginalized APC Inc.

Prelude “At Apple Pharmaceutical Company (APC Inc.), our biopharma strategy uniquely combines the reach and resources of a major biopharma company with the entrepreneurial spirit and agility of a successful biotech company. With this strategy, we focus on our customers’ needs, giving maximum priority to accelerating pipeline development, delivering sales growth and continuing to manage costs”, the Chairman of the board of directors had told Daryl during one of their initial ‘exploratory’ meetings. Daryl had thoroughly researched APC before accepting their offer to lead APC as its CEO. He knew that APC is the second largest biopharma company in the world by revenue with a suite of flagship drugs with impressive sales - PLAVIX®, $6.7 billion, ABILIFY®, $2.6 billion, REYATAZ®, $1.5 billion, AVAPRO®/AVALIDE®, $1.2 billion and SUSTIVA® franchise, $1.4 billion, BARACLUDE®, $931 million. He also knew that APC was currently struggling with its profitability. He had studied analyst reports that were consistently raising the issue of margins for five quarters in a row. He was surprised to learn that the last CEO was given three quarters to reverse the trend. “Daryl, APC will be in deep trouble if we cannot revive its margins in the next two quarters”, the Chairman had reiterated just after signed the offer. Daryl, a veteran in the biopharma industry who was successfully running sales and marketing at a competing, much smaller but impressively growing biopharmaceutical company, was very clear from the beginning that it would be tough ask just running APC, let alone improving its profitability. Today, as he was walking towards the conference room for a marathon meeting with all his chiefs, Daryl reminded himself that he always liked the challenge of a daunting task. The Meeting Daryl had been introduced to all of his chiefs when he was on-boarded by the Chairman a week ago. Over the past week, Daryl had also had one-on-one meetings with all of them. As...