For many contract manufacturers, the end of the COVID-19 pandemic—and the production contracts that came with it—marked a sharp reversal in revenues. While a few CDMOs like South Korea’s Samsung Biologics bucked that trend, many other prominent contractors, such as Switzerland’s Lonza, have struggled to keep sales ticking upward in recent years.
Now, however, operating under a new CEO and implementing a fresh turnaround strategy, Lonza appears to have closed the chapter on its sales stagnation.
Over the first six months of 2025, Lonza grew sales 19% at constant currencies to 3.6 billion Swiss francs ($4.5 billion). The company’s core CDMO business did much of the heavy lifting, returning 3.1 billion francs ($3.9 billion) for the period—roughly a 23% increase over the sum the business delivered in the first half of 2024, Lonza said in a July 23 release.
Lonza’s bread-and-butter contract manufacturing business has benefited tremendously from commissions at the massive mammalian drug substance plant in Vacaville, California, that the company purchased from Roche for $1.2 billion last year. Lonza expects the former Genentech facility to “contribute around half a billion [Swiss francs] in sales” this year, the company said in its release.
Still, other areas of Lonza’s business—notably its cell and gene technologies and microbial operations—continued to underperform.
Lonza’s total sales in specialized modalities—which include the company’s CGT and microbial businesses—came in nearly 9% below expectations at ODDO BHF, according to a Wednesday note from the analysts.
Meanwhile, sales from the company’s capsules and health ingredients (CHI) unit, which Lonza eventually plans to divest, remained flat for the period.
Lonza’s resurgence
Although Lonza’s CDMO business may not be “fully firing on all cylinders” just yet, its contract manufacturing operations continue to “outperform expectations,” analysts at William Blair wrote in a note to clients Wednesday, adding that the performance is likely to be “well-received.”
Thanks to its strong performance, Lonza is upgrading its full-year sales guidance to target growth between 20% and 21%, up slightly from the company’s prior prediction that 2025 revenue growth would “[approach] 20%.”
Lonza was candid about potential risks to its business, noting in its earnings release that it will be “closely monitoring the biotech funding environment and regulatory developments in the U.S., which may have an impact specifically on emerging technologies such as [cell and gene therapy].” With regards to potential trade duties, Lonza said it “expects no material financial impact from U.S. trade policies and remains confident it can support customers to mitigate the potential impact of tariffs.”
Lonza’s sales turnaround follows the reveal of a restructuring initiative under the company’s new CEO, Wolfgang Wienand, in December. The plan, dubbed “One Lonza,” put greater emphasis on Lonza’s core manufacturing business, set the stage for the CHI sale and consolidated many of the CDMO’s existing business units. The company formally rolled out that new operating model April 1, Lonza said in Wednesday’s release.
Samsung stays the course
While Lonza is returning to growth, Samsung Biologics continues to ride an upward revenue wave with no apparent end in sight.
For 2025’s second quarter, Samsung Bio reported total sales of roughly 1.29 trillion Korean won ($936 million), nearly an 11% increase over the 1.16 trillion won the company logged over the same period last year.
In a press release, Samsung Bio’s CEO John Rim attributed the company’s growth to the broadening of its antibody-drug conjugate operations, the introduction of research services through Samsung Organoids and the opening of its fifth production facility in Korea.
Meanwhile, much like how Lonza is looking to shed its capsules business, Samsung Bio is planning to part ways with its biosimilars subsidiary, Samsung Bioepis. The Korean CDMO didn’t provide any updates on the proposed sell-off in its earnings release, though it reiterated that the move would allow Samsung Bio to “focus on strengthening its core capabilities as a pure-play CDMO.”
Samsung Bio’s strong quarter is nothing new for the company, which reported full-year 2024 sales growth of 23% to 4.55 trillion won ($3.3 billion) back in January. That trajectory has been supported by the repeat signings of major manufacturing contracts with global drugmakers, often unnamed in Samsung’s communications.
In late April, for instance, the CDMO inked a $518 million supply contract with an undisclosed U.S. pharmaceutical company that is set to run through the end of 2031. The deal will focus on biologics, though little other information about the production tie-up has been released.