The analysts at Deloitte continue to calculate a dwindling return for Big Pharma’s R&D dollars. Their latest number crunching for the world’s top 12 biopharma companies concludes that ROI on their investment cash has shrunk to 3.7%, the lowest level yet after hitting 10.1% in 2010.
What’s killing these companies’ numbers, Deloitte says, is that while development costs on new drugs have plateaued at about $1.5 billion on each program, their revenue keeps falling. There’s been an 11.4% drop in revenue year-on-year over 6 years, which has now fallen to $394 million in average peak annual sales.