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Drug giant Bristol Myers Squibb Co. will close a Redwood City research facility and consolidate operations in Brisbane as part of a corporate plan to cut 2,200 jobs this year en route to eliminating $1.5 billion in costs by the end of 2025.
The New Jersey-based company (NYSE: BMY) also said it will cull open positions, cut layers of management and shelve some drug programs in the cost-cutting initiatives under new CEO and board chair Chris Boerner.
The plan is a retelling of a common story over the past three years that has taken on a new intensity over the past six months. From Genentech Inc. parent Roche and BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. to startups and maturing companies, life sciences companies are cutting jobs, shedding space and freezing programs to focus on potentially high-return drugs or to extend cash runways to get to their next data milestones.
Officials with BMS, which said Thursday in the first quarter it lost $11.91 billion on revenue of $11.86 billion, didn't say how many Bay Area positions it will cut.
"We remain committed to the San Francisco Bay Area as an important innovation hub for Bristol Myers Squibb and we will continue to drive transformational science under a unified R&D presence in Brisbane to deliver on our mission for patients," the company said in a statement to the Business Times.
BMS's moves in the Bay Area may be indicative of what the company is trying to achieve throughout its organization. Boerner said most of the savings will be drawn from existing operations rather than recent acquisitions, and two-thirds of the cuts over the next 20 months will be tied to drug research and development.
BMS said Thursday it wants to focus on research-and-development work with a high return on investment.
The company's 256,000-square-foot Redwood City site, which has been a center of its focus on cancer immunotherapy programs and once was promised to house 400 employees, will close. Remaining employees will move into a four-year-old development in Brisbane where BMS took over a 129,800-square-foot lease following its 2020 acquisition of heart disease drug developer MyoKardia Inc. for $13.1 billion.
Cancer immunotherapies have delivered stunning results in some patients, and BMS's Opdivo and Yervoy remain among its top three drugs in terms of revenue. But companies still are trying to find ways to make sure that the majority of people who don't respond to treatment or whose responses aren't long-lasting can benefit. MyoKardia's drug, on the other hand, is used by heart disease patients with a specific, well-documented genetic mutation.
BMS had consolidated its cancer immunotherapy operations from Milpitas and Sunnyvale to BioMed Realty's redeveloped Woodside Technology Park near Woodside Road after its $2.4 billion acquisition in 2009 of Medarex Inc. BMS's lease there expires in March 2027.
The first phase of The Shore at Sierra Point in Brisbane, where BMS will consolidate operations in the Bay Area, was opened in 2020 by Healthpeak Properties Inc. (NYSE: DOC).
BMS didn't disclose its plans for the 55,751-square-foot R&D facility it picked up in San Francisco's Mission Bay with its $74 billion acquisition in 2019 of Celgene Corp.
