Sanofi Struggled To Impress Shareholders For Years — Will Over A Dozen New Products and $10B In Acquisitions Change That?

French drugmaker SanofiSNY

boasts a portfolio packed with hundreds of products — insulin, a robust vaccine franchise — and now, a dozen-plus new hopefuls. But turn your attention to the fifth page of its Q1 2025 earnings presentation, and you’ll quickly ID the star of the show.

Dupixent, a biologic indicated for asthma and COPD, saw its sales climb 20.3% year-over-year — now accounting for a stunning 35% of the firm’s €9.9B in sales. It’s the kind of drug that developers dream about — the envy of the whole industry.

And Dupixent is hitting its stride just in time. Patented through 2031, the company is using it to plug the gap left by former blockbuster Aubagio — a multiple sclerosis treatment that went generic after a $1.5B top-line in 2022.

Even then, Sanofi is already scouting its next hero drug. Like Aubagio and others before it — Dupixent will eventually need a worthy successor.

Looking for the answer: Once you have one, you gotta keep them coming. Still, Sanofi has had trouble with that recently. Its stock has risen just 0.44% over the past year as investors struggle to identify what asset will deliver compelling growth. In 2023, the drugmaker said it had 12 drug candidates that could generate up to €5B in peak sales. Two years later, many of those products are just getting off the ground — and investors are watching carefully.

• Pharma launches represented 11% of sales in Q1, a 46.5% YoY increase — driven by Beyfortus (for RSV), Altuviio (for Hemophilia A), and NEXVIAZYME (for glycogen storage disease type II).
• The launches helped lift company-wide sales by 9.7% YoY, offsetting the declines in ‘Other Medicines’, the outfit’s largest segment, which fell 2.3%.

A Great Drug Could Come From Anywhere

Sanofi’s successes have been overshadowed by a row of bad luck in the lab, with back-to-back bad trials from an e.coli vaccine and a COPD candidate clouding the outlook. Undeterred, the firm is turning to a tried-and-true method to keep its pipeline flowing — the checkbook.

• Sanofi sold a majority stake in its consumer health division, Opella, for €10B ($11.4B) to focus exclusively on “innovative medicine.”
• On news of the sale, Sanofi spent $600M to buy Dren Bio’s early-stage immunology drug and $400M on Vigil NeuroscienceVIGL
  and its Alzheimer’s candidate.

Forward-looking: On Monday, the multinational inked its third acquisition of the year, dropping $9.5B on Blueprint MedicinesBPMC

, picking up an immunology franchise that includes rare disease drug Ayvakit — which analysts project to generate $2.3B+/yr by 2033. CEO Paul Hudson says, “Sanofi still retains a sizeable capacity for further acquisitions.”