CSL has slashed its revenue projection for the fiscal year from $15.8 billion to $15.2 billion, in another indication of the Australian company’s financial distress since its ill-fated 2022 acquisition of Swiss iron deficiency and kidney disease specialist Vifor Pharma for $11.7 billion.
In addition to the revised revenue projection for CSL’s fiscal year, which ends on June 30, the company said it will sustain a $5 billion asset impairment charge. The update follows a review of the company’s finances after the abrupt departure of three-year CEO Paul McKenzie, Ph.D., in February.
In response to the news, CSL’s share price tumbled by some 16% to its lowest figure since 2017. Since the start of the year, CSL’s stock has dropped by 41%.
“The failure of several late-stage R&D projects, along with some market-share losses in key markets has contributed to a loss of confidence in growth prospect of the business,” interim CEO Gordon Naylor said in a conference call on Monday morning. “There is no fundamental shift in business strategy. This is primarily about excellence in execution.”
CSL's new revenue projection spells out a 2.6% decline from its FY 2025 revenue of $15.6 billion. It would be the company's first revenue decline in more than a decade and would come less than four years after its largest acquisition.
Specifically, to its adjusted revenue estimate, CSL has slashed $300 million from its U.S. immunoglobulin (Ig) sales projection for the year, blaming “excess Ig inventory in the channel, causing a disconnect between in-customer demand and the sales that CSL reports,” chief financial officer Ken Lim said.
Naylor added that CSL has been “slow to respond” to competitive pressures in the Ig market.
The company still sees increased demand for Ig in the U.S. and that its market share is increasing. Revenue from the plasma products topped $3 billion in the first half of the fiscal year, accounting for 56% of the revenue generated by CSL Behring.
Additionally, CSL expects sales of another of its plasma products, albumin, to come up $200 million short of its prior projection. The company blamed a decline in the market value of albumin in China.
CSL also sliced $150 million from its fiscal year projection, attributed to a combination of factors, including the conflict in the Middle East, which caused a pause in sales to Iran, slower-than-expected growth in hemophilia gene therapy Hemgenix, and heightened generic competition in the iron market.
Analysts from Jefferies said that CSL’s downgrade wasn’t a complete surprise given the “documented issues” with Ig sales in the U.S. and albumin sales in China. The analysts said they don’t believe the projections are a signal of long-term trouble for the company.
“We continue to believe both markets are underpenetrated, so the industry should grow over the medium term,” the Jefferies team wrote in a note to investors.
As for the impairment, which applies to FY 2026 and 2027, CSL said it has to do with underutilized manufacturing capacity and assets from the Vifor buyout which, have not panned out. The write-down comes on top of another $1.1 billion impairment from the first half of FY 2026.
CSL also announced the retirement of chief commercial officer Andy Schmeltz and the promotion of Diego Sacristan to fill his role. Sacristan has been the U.S. chief of CSL for the past year.