CEO Alex H. has a problem. He was planted by Roche to help acquire cheaply BioMarin for its rare diseases and gene therapy business. Now Roche has lost interest in these parts of BioMarin portfolio. Meantime Alex hired senior team members to conduct the M&A process and prepared ground by streamlining the company thru layoffs. At the same time, the action was taken to lower the company stock price. Since Roche lost interest current interest should be opposite, eg. to increase the company value. This can be done by careful layoffs and pruning the incompetent and redundant or unnecessary management, for example, the Business Development VP, Chief Technology Officer VP, Technical Development VP, Or R&D Enzymes VP. Some cancelled future projects may be reconsidered in this new landscape. Question is whether Alex H is capable to bring back the company on the track considering his past experience at Genentech?
To the Post on Ultragenyx:
No surprise, Ultragenyx has Biomarin roots therefore the bad management practices. leadership it is not, but manipulators who hijacked upper positions taking care of their careers repeating the all worn meaningless phrases from the leadership training fads. Biomarin management misbehaved badly during layoffs enlisting the Irish office into chainsaw work on the US soil. Currently due to biopharma under layoffs stress, they think they are free to do anything!
Bad actors in management are still around. Those who sacrificed their team members during layoffs often telling that no none is on the list. Time for them to go.
Stock went down like a rock. Now the traders are pumping it up again. Company has been used like this for decades,: "Pump and dump" scheme. Now upswing means another contraction and layoff coming. Reorg by combining departments, for example preformulation and formulation, like some companies have done already. Same with analytical services.
Another layoff was announced. This time 225 people.
CEO keeps busy to make a company an appealing target for M&A. We should worry when a next layoff might occur.
Goal is selling a skeleton.
There is too much unnecessary and nonproductive weight. For example, such departments like Technical Development should go. There is a lack of understanding there what technical development is and what it should do, and the company current plans may have it as a burden, rather than an asset in any M&A process.
Recent layoff pushed many productive people out, but mediocre and connected are still with the company, for example, those doing standard low level analytical procedures that could easily be outsourced. Worse, some newcomers used the reorganization to dismantle organization structures and bring their own cronies in. Those newcomers could not match the quality of people who were pushed out 2 years ago, since they were failures in their earlier careers for years doing marginal work in well known biotechnology companies, such like Amgen or Merck. They would never hire people better than themselves. A downward spiral.
Layoff of 170
Make sure you understand the benefits offer. Unless you already have another better job.
Ask for a list of these 170. And who is processing the event. Do not get impressed by lowly HR supposedly helping you. They help the company to fool you.
These are general things on layoffs. Knowing more details could be helpful
Bayer shows the way:
https://www.biospace.com/article/bayer-eliminates-nearly-half-its-executive-positions-in-major-overhaul/
There are many vice-presidents and directors at Biomarin, who just go to the meetings and avoid real responsibilities. These should be pruned, not the lower level people who do the work. Check the next layoff list.
New CEO is working the stock price down. Good news will be coming after stock drops below 70. His ex-parent company could be interested in M&A step. Will be still much less to pay than at $100 per share. Good job, CEO. And there will be laypoffs for better bottom line. CEO got good experience in this at Genentech.
The stock dropped 4.27% today after the yesterday announcement of 170 person layoff. This demonstrates lack of investors confidence in the company management. The company must reshuffle the top management ranks to convince investors that positive changes are coming. Example can be recent cutting off several R&D projects - clearly telling investors that company was pursuing wrong goals. Who was responsible? Layoffs should proceed across the whole organization.
Today the company announced laying off 170 employees. This was predictable and earlier posts indicated such possibility. Beware, this is the first round. More would come. Possibly you were told that your team would not be affected and then you suddenly learned about being on the list. This is the dreadful management style here, keeping you in the dark and throwing under the bus.
Time that this should happen to such management as well. Let's consider proposing names in this forum of the worst managers who should be gone asap. Btw is brinda staying or going? Or g and g? or h? You know who.
BioMarin said it’s wrapped up a pipeline review and will stop investing in four experimental therapies because they don’t meet its threshold for patient impact and commercial opportunity.
Two of the discontinued programs, BMN 355 for long-QT syndrome and BMN 365 for PKP2 arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, hadn’t yet been tested in humans. The other two, BMN 331 for hereditary angioedema and BMN 255 for a certain kind of liver disease, were in early stages of clinical testing, according to a BioMarin presentation for investors in September.
BioMarin said its full pipeline will be subject to “ongoing assessment.”
At the same time the investment community considers Roctavian as a commercial flop.
All this indicates restructuring that will negatively affect large number of employees, as well as long term investment community. Prospects for being acquired could also diminish.
Is Biomarin a candidate for takeover?
The attractiveness of a company as an acquisition candidate depends on various factors beyond just its financial metrics. To provide a rough estimate, let's assume a P/E ratio of 65 and a market capitalization is ﹩17 billion.
To calculate the annual net profit that would make the company attractive, we can use the formula:
Market Capitalization = P/E Ratio * Net Profit
Rearranging the formula, we get:
Net Profit = Market Capitalization / P/E Ratio
Using the given values:
Net Profit = ﹩17 billion / 65
Net Profit ≈ ﹩261.54 million
To make the company an attractive candidate for takeover with a market capitalization of ﹩17 billion, a P/E ratio of 65, and sales of ﹩2 billion per year, it would need to generate an annual net profit of approximately ﹩261.54 million.
How could it get there in 2024?
Expect layoffs.
The earlier entry describes the current chaotic and dangerous environment people have to cope with. Some of this have been present in company operations before, but the recent CEO departure and change at the top exacerbated all the ills and added many new ones. Top management tries outdo each other in throwing others under the bus. This behavior has however migrated to lower levels making life difficult for everyone. From bad to worse.
This is the earlier entry:
"It's been miserable here for the last 3 years. Anyone that does actual work has been slowly laid off. Management and the majority left are more focused on power points to upper management because their worried about their jobs, while those that do actual work are left struggling with less headcount to get double the work done. Everyone is just waiting till the ax falls. Which instills a culture of fear, so nothing is being advanced. Your point person is there one day and silently gone the next, without any communication by management on who is now taking over their responsibilities. So weeks are lost, as people scramble to find someone to do the work. "Big picture" projects that would give the company long term flexibility are shot down. Management does not have your back, because they are worried about their jobs as well. I have never worked in a place with such blame culture in my entire career. It's never "let's fix this" it's "who's fault is this". There's no cross functional communication . No one knows what other depts are doing. Some depts are running the same projects unbeknownst to each other. Upper management are in fighting and busy throwing each other under the bus, which makes working almost impossible, since you spend the majority of your day in conflict and strife "
It's been miserable here for the last 3 years. Anyone that does actual work has been slowly laid off. Management and the majority left are more focused on power points to upper management because their worried about their jobs, while those that do actual work are left struggling with less headcount to get double the work done. Everyone is just waiting till the ax falls. Which instills a culture of fear, so nothing is being advanced. Your point person is there one day and silently gone the next, without any communication by management on who is now taking over their responsibilities. So weeks are lost, as people scramble to find someone to do the work. "Big picture" projects that would give the company long term flexibility are shot down. Management does not have your back, because they are worried about their jobs as well. I have never worked in a place with such blame culture in my entire career. It's never "let's fix this" it's "who's fault is this". There's no cross functional communication . No one knows what other depts are doing. Some depts are running the same projects unbeknownst to each other. Upper management are in fighting and busy throwing each other under the bus, which makes working almost impossible, since you spend the majority of your day in conflict and strife .
We all wonder how the new CEO would shape the company. Would he sweep out the incompetent, or internally networked? Who would be the replacements? Roche and Genentech people with experience mismatch? Some candidates may be attracted by location coming from some dull, backwater places. However, internal management changes are needed.
Very good candidates cannot be attracted considering future product portfolio prospects. Therefore, a new team may be as inefficient as the old one. All under the excuse of working on ultrarare diseases. Really rare, like the 3 hemophilia patients so far. The Gates Foundation is more appropriate to work on such scale projects.
