Daiichi Sankyo has postponed its annual report by two weeks to allow for additional time to finalize the financial figures.
The main reason for the delay, according to the Japanese pharma, is the need to review “the supply plans for its oncology products portfolio and development pipeline in light of rapidly changing business conditions.”
“As a result, additional deliberation is required to reasonably estimate the amount of loss provisions to be recorded in connection with contracts with contract manufacturers,” the company said in its April 24 announcement (PDF).
Daiichi’s shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange dropped by over 10% following the announcement of the delayed fiscal year earnings results.
Simultaneously, Daiichi said it has decided to unveil its new five-year business plan together with its fiscal year 2025 earnings report on May 11 rather than separately on May 19.
Daiichi’s annual report will come several weeks after President Donald Trump unveiled a 100% tariff on patented drugs and ingredients. Under existing trade deals, products from the European Union and Japan are subject to a 15% tariff. The administration is also open to offering exemptions under “most favored nation” drug pricing deals, similar to those already signed with 17 large pharmas.
Daiichi currently operates two in-house manufacturing facilities in the U.S.—one in Ohio and the other in New York. As part of its global manufacturing expansion plan for its core antibody-drug conjugate business, Daiichi is reportedly investing up to 56 billion yen ($351 million) to build additional facilities at its Ohio campus.
The Ohio plant performs fill-finish and packaging duties for ADCs. Additionally, Daiichi produces the monoclonal antibody components of its existing ADCs in the U.S., but not the linker parts of the medicines, Ken Keller, who leads Daiichi’s U.S. branch and its global oncology business, told Fierce during an interview on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January.
“We feel it’s better for us to look at ways to onshore things, but we’re still developing those plans,” Keller said at the time.
Daiichi uses CDMOs as well. The company suffered a setback in 2024 when the FDA rejected its Merck & Co.-partnered HER3 ADC, patritumab deruxtecan (HER3-DXd), because of problems with a contractor’s manufacturing facility. The pair has since withdrawn the application after a phase 3 miss on overall survival in EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer.
Besides these factors, the ongoing Iran war is also disrupting the pharmaceutical supply chain by pushing up energy costs and complicating logistics.
As of Daiichi’s earnings update in October 2025, the company expected its annual revenue to reach 2,100 billion yen ($13.1 billion), which would represent a 11.3% increase over the previous fiscal year ended in March 2025.
By 2030, the company aims to have at least four ADCs on the market, namely AstraZeneca-partnered Enhertu and Datroway, plus HER3-DXd and Merck-partnered CDH6-directed raludotatug deruxtecan.
As Enhertu continues to make headway in HER2-positive breast cancer, Datroway faces a pivotal test with the phase 3 Avanzar study in first-line NSCLC, which is expected to read out this year.