Sector Report

Key Take-Aways 2025 CPHI Americas Conference

The Bourne Partners team recently attended the 2025 CPHI Americas Conference to get updated visibility to trends impacting contract development manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) and other pharma services businesses. In particular, our executive meetings highlighted strong demand for sterile CDMOs. These CDMOs are also benefiting from the acquisition of Catalent by Novo Holdings last year since this is taking considerable sterile fill-finish manufacturing capacity off the market. Finally, many executives seem to be in a “wait-and-see” mode with respect to recent tariff announcements. There has been an uptick of RFPs from foreign companies in response to the tariffs, but they seem to be “price checking” exercises at this point.

Please refer to our white paper on key take-aways from the CPHI Americas Conference here.

Other select CPHI Americas Conference take-aways include:

1. Capital Environment. Biopharma sponsors are facing a more challenging funding environment. This is resulting in more interest in non-dilutive financing solutions, such as revenue interest financings (RIFs), royalty monetizations, venture credits, and the monetization of future priority review vouchers.
2. New Business Models. We also see the potential for more integration of R&D (CRO related) and manufacturing (CDMO related) activities in the development and production of precision medicines. New research by Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development empirically showed material financial and time savings by integrating CRO and CDMO functions under one roof.
3. Pharma Supply Chains. There was a consensus view that biopharma sponsors and pharma services companies need to prioritize being operationally flexible given a volatile trade policy environment. Many executives we spoke with seemed concerned that the Trump administration appears to underestimate the complex and global nature of the pharma supply chain.
4. Shortages of Skilled Labor. Since the Trump administration started introducing tariffs, there have been a number of press releases by major pharma companies about significant capital investments in domestic manufacturing infrastructure. Pharma companies have deep pockets, and this could result in skilled labor being bid away from the CDMO space in the coming years.

In the dynamic healthcare industry, staying ahead of trends is essential for informed decision marking and seizing opportunities. Please contact our research team at research@bourne-partners.com or our Head of Research Don Hooker for more information.