Bristol Myers Squibb has a problem that every successful pharmaceutical company eventually faces: its biggest drugs will not remain exclusive forever.
For years, products such as Eliquis, Opdivo and Revlimid generated enormous amounts of revenue. In 2025 alone, Eliquis brought in $14.4 billion, Opdivo produced $10 billion and Revlimid contributed another $3 billion. Together, those three drugs accounted for well over half of Bristol Myers Squibb’s $48.2 billion in annual revenue. (Bristol Myers Squibb)
That kind of concentration is wonderful while the patents are intact and the prescriptions keep arriving. It becomes considerably less charming when generic and biosimilar competition begins circling the calendar.
Revlimid is already declining sharply following the introduction of generic competition. Eliquis, which Bristol Myers shares with Pfizer, faces an approaching loss of exclusivity later in the decade. Opdivo’s competitive position will also become more difficult to defend over time.
Bristol Myers therefore is not acquiring companies simply because management enjoys collecting biotechnology firms. It is racing to replace billions of dollars in mature-product revenue before the patent clock runs out.
The company’s recent buying spree is best understood as a high-stakes attempt to purchase its next generation of growth while it still has the cash flow to do it.
Bristol Myers Is Buying Time as Much as Science
Drug development is slow, expensive and spectacularly unforgiving. A promising molecule can spend years moving through clinical trials only to fail near the finish line. Even when a treatment works, regulatory delays, manufacturing problems or disappointing commercial execution can reduce its value.
That makes internal research alone a dangerous strategy for a company staring at a large patent cliff. Bristol Myers cannot simply ask its laboratories to produce several blockbuster drugs by Thursday afternoon.
Acquisitions offer another route. Instead of waiting for early-stage discoveries to mature, the company can buy businesses with approved treatments, late-stage candidates or specialized platforms that may begin contributing revenue sooner.
That logic shaped the company’s rapid series of deals involving Mirati Therapeutics, Karuna Therapeutics and RayzeBio. Each transaction addressed a different weakness, but all three shared the same strategic purpose: bringing future revenue closer to the present.
Bristol Myers was not shopping for distant scientific possibilities. It was shopping for assets that could plausibly matter before its older portfolio lost too much ground.
Karuna Was the Clearest Revenue-Replacement Deal
The approximately $14 billion acquisition of Karuna Therapeutics was the largest and most obvious expression of this strategy.
Karuna’s lead asset, then known as KarXT, was already under regulatory review when the deal was announced. It later became Cobenfy, a treatment for schizophrenia with a different mechanism from traditional antipsychotic medications.
That distinction matters. Schizophrenia has long been treated with drugs that primarily target dopamine receptors, and many patients struggle with limited effectiveness or difficult side effects. Cobenfy approaches the disease through muscarinic receptors, giving Bristol Myers an opportunity to establish a new treatment category rather than merely compete for a slightly different share of an old one.
The company was willing to pay a substantial premium because Cobenfy represented something rare: a late-stage asset with blockbuster potential, a clear commercial market and room for possible expansion into additional neurological and psychiatric conditions.
In practical terms, Bristol Myers paid billions to reduce uncertainty and shorten the wait.
The deal also rebuilt the company’s presence in neuroscience, an area it had largely moved away from years earlier. That gives Bristol Myers another major therapeutic pillar alongside oncology, hematology, immunology and cardiovascular medicine.
The opportunity is significant, but the purchase price left little room for mediocrity. Cobenfy does not merely need to become a respectable product. It needs to grow into a major franchise capable of helping replace revenue from some of the largest medicines in the company’s history.
No pressure, of course.
Mirati Added Revenue and Another Oncology Lottery Ticket
The Mirati acquisition followed a more familiar Bristol Myers formula: buy a commercially validated cancer drug and acquire the surrounding pipeline with it.
The centerpiece was Krazati, a treatment targeting cancers with the KRAS G12C mutation. Bristol Myers gained an approved product with expansion opportunities in lung and colorectal cancer, along with additional oncology candidates that could increase the long-term value of the transaction.
Krazati entered a competitive market, however, and it was never likely to replace Eliquis or Opdivo by itself. Its strategic value comes from a combination of current revenue, additional indications and the possibility that Mirati’s research pipeline produces something considerably larger.
That is the attraction of buying a biotechnology platform rather than licensing a single drug. Bristol Myers acquires the commercial asset, the scientific knowledge, the researchers and several future chances to be right.
It also acquires every future chance to be wrong, but the merger presentation usually places that information several slides later.
RayzeBio Was a Bet on the Next Major Cancer-Treatment Platform
The $4.1 billion acquisition of RayzeBio was different. It gave Bristol Myers a foothold in radiopharmaceutical therapy, an emerging field that uses radioactive isotopes to deliver treatment directly to cancer cells.
The scientific appeal is easy to understand. Traditional chemotherapy can damage healthy tissue because it circulates broadly through the body. A well-designed radiopharmaceutical attempts to carry a concentrated radioactive payload directly to cells expressing a particular target.
If the technology fulfills its promise, it could become an important new treatment platform across several solid tumors.
RayzeBio’s lead program brought Bristol Myers into a fast-growing area already attracting significant attention from large pharmaceutical companies. The acquisition was therefore not only about a single clinical candidate. It was an attempt to secure manufacturing knowledge, scientific capabilities and a position in a market that could become much more valuable over the next decade.
The risk is equally straightforward. Radiopharmaceuticals are difficult to manufacture and distribute. Their radioactive components have limited shelf lives, and production requires specialized facilities and careful logistical coordination. Clinical success alone is not enough; Bristol Myers must also prove it can reliably produce and deliver the treatment.
RayzeBio may eventually look like an early move into a transformational area of cancer care. It could also become a very expensive lesson in why promising science and commercial execution are not the same thing.
The Growth Portfolio Is Beginning to Carry More Weight
The encouraging part of the Bristol Myers story is that the transition is no longer entirely theoretical.
The company’s newer portfolio includes Cobenfy, Camzyos, Breyanzi, Reblozyl, Sotyktu, Opdualag and the injectable formulation Opdivo Qvantig. During the first quarter of 2026, Bristol Myers reported that its growth portfolio generated $6.23 billion in revenue, a 12% increase from the prior year. Stronger performances from newer medicines helped offset continued declines among mature products. (Reuters)
That is exactly what management needs to demonstrate. Investors do not require every acquired drug to become the next Eliquis. They need the combined growth portfolio to expand quickly enough that the company can absorb declining legacy revenue without suffering a prolonged contraction.
The portfolio approach also reduces dependence on any single acquisition. Karuna may provide the most immediate commercial opportunity, Mirati may deliver incremental oncology growth and RayzeBio may create a longer-term platform. Meanwhile, internally developed and previously acquired products can contribute alongside them.
Bristol Myers is trying to replace a small number of enormous franchises with a broader collection of growing products. That is sensible diversification, but it also creates a more complicated company to evaluate.
The old Bristol Myers story could be summarized by watching a few blockbuster drugs. The new story requires investors to monitor launches, clinical readouts, indication expansions, manufacturing capacity and reimbursement across several therapeutic areas.
The portfolio is healthier, but the homework has become considerably less relaxing.
Buying Growth Creates Its Own Set of Problems
Acquisitions can accelerate growth, but they do not eliminate risk. They change its shape.
Bristol Myers spent heavily and accepted additional debt to complete its recent transactions. That reduced its financial flexibility and increased the importance of disciplined execution. The company cannot repeatedly pay large premiums for promising biotechnology firms and assume that every pipeline will cooperate.
Integration is another challenge. Innovative biotechnology companies often thrive because they are focused, fast-moving and willing to challenge established thinking. Large pharmaceutical organizations excel at clinical development, regulation and global commercialization, but they can also introduce additional layers of process.
The goal is to give acquired scientists greater resources without burying them beneath enough meetings to make the original discovery feel like a distant childhood memory.
There is also the unavoidable issue of valuation. Paying a premium for a company can still create value if the acquired assets outperform expectations. But when the price already assumes major commercial success, an merely decent outcome may disappoint shareholders.
Karuna, Mirati and RayzeBio do not need to fail completely for the acquisitions to underperform. They only need to produce less value than Bristol Myers paid for them.
The Strategy Makes Sense Because Standing Still Was Worse
It is easy to criticize Bristol Myers for spending aggressively. The more useful question is what the alternative would have looked like.
Management could have protected the balance sheet, avoided large acquisitions and relied more heavily on internal research. That approach would have lowered near-term financial risk, but it also would have left the company dangerously exposed to the decline of Revlimid and the approaching exclusivity losses of other major products.
Bristol Myers chose urgency.
The company used cash flow from its mature franchises to purchase assets in neuroscience, precision oncology and radiopharmaceuticals. It diversified its pipeline, added approved and late-stage medicines, and increased the number of products capable of supporting revenue in the next decade.
That does not guarantee success. Pharmaceutical acquisitions are not vending machines where management inserts $14 billion and receives a blockbuster.
The strategy should be judged by several practical results: the commercial trajectory of Cobenfy, continued growth from Camzyos and Breyanzi, additional uses for Krazati, clinical progress at RayzeBio, debt reduction and the overall ability of the growth portfolio to overtake declining legacy revenue.
The Bottom Line
Bristol Myers Squibb’s acquisition strategy is not primarily about becoming larger. It is about becoming newer before its existing revenue base becomes smaller.
The company is buying promising drugs, specialized platforms and years of development time because time is the one resource its patent portfolio cannot manufacture. Every quarter brings the loss-of-exclusivity challenge closer, even when current sales remain strong.
So far, the newer portfolio is growing and beginning to shoulder more of the business. That is encouraging, but the real test will come when the company can no longer rely on its legacy blockbusters to conceal weaker performances elsewhere.
Bristol Myers has assembled enough potential replacements to make the transition believable. Now it must prove that it purchased future franchises rather than an extremely expensive collection of possibilities.
This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment advice.
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