As the industry moves further into 2026, what are larger issues impacting industry and company performance. A view from the C-suite.

By Patricia Van Arnum, Editorial Director, DCAT, pvanarnum@dcat.org

A view from the C-suite
Bio/pharmaceutical industry executives are operating in a broader global arena marked by greater macroeconomic, financial, and geopolitical uncertainty. A recent CEO survey by the management consultancy, PwC, shows that across all industries, CEO confidence in their company’s revenue prospects has fallen to its lowest level in five years.

According to PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey, only three-in-ten (30%) of CEOs say they are confident about revenue growth over the next 12 months—down from 38% in 2025 and 56% in 2022. The survey is based on responses from 4,454 CEOs in multiple industries across 95 countries and territories. Concerns about macroeconomic volatility (31%), technology disruption (24%), and geopolitics (23%) have edged higher while concern about inflation is marginally down from 27% in 2025 to 25%.

One-in-five CEOs globally (20%) say their organization is highly or extremely exposed to the risk of significant financial loss from tariffs over the next 12 months, though exposure varies widely by region—from 6% across the Middle East to 28% in the Chinese Mainland and 35% in Mexico. Among US CEOs, 22% say their company is highly or extremely exposed to tariffs, which is close to the global average. Almost a third of CEOs (29%) globally say tariffs will reduce their company’s net profit margin in the year ahead versus 60% expecting little to no change and 6% anticipating margin improvement. Among those expecting margin compression due to tariffs, most anticipate a decline of less than 15%.

Little over half of CEOs (51%) are planning to make international investments in the year ahead. Delving further into these investment trends, the US keeps its position as the top destination for investment, with more than a third (35%) of CEOs placing it in the top three countries that will receive the highest proportion of their investment. The UK and Germany (both 13%) and the Chinese Mainland (11%) remain popular choices. Among the significant changes from last year’s survey,13% of CEOs planning to make international investments selected India, up from 7%.

US bio/pharma investments
For the bio/pharma industry specifically, increased capital investment in the US has come hand-in-hand with US tariff/trade policy. In 2025 and 2026 to date, the industry has seen a slate of announced expansions in the US—greenfield projects and expansions of existing facilities for manufacturing, research and development, and other capital projects—by the large bio/pharmaceutical companies. These multi-year investments included announcements made by AbbVie ($100 billion), Amgen ($3 billion), AstraZeneca ($50 billion), Biogen ($2 billion), Eli Lilly and Company ($50 billion), Gilead Sciences ($32 billion), GSK ($30 billion), Johnson & Johnson ($55 billion), Merck & Co. ($70 billion), Novartis ($23 billion), Novo Nordisk ($4.1 billion), Pfizer ($70 billion), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals ($2 billion), Roche ($50 billion), and Sanofi ($20 billion). 

Product innovation:
Product innovation is central to the performance of the industry as a whole and for individual companies and looking at the number of new drug approvals is one measure of product innovation. Although new drug approvals by FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) were somewhat down in 2025, they remained largely in line with previous approval levels. In 2025, FDA’s CDER approved 46 new molecular entities approved under new drug applications (small-molecule/chemically synthesized products) and new biological therapeutics, such as recombinant proteins and monoclonal antibodies, approved under a biologics license application. Other biologic-based products, including blood products, vaccines, allergenics, tissues, and cellular and gene therapies, are reviewed and approved by a separate center within FDA, the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), and are not part of this analysis. In a looking at full-year drug approvals from 2021 to 2025, and with the exception of 2022 (which had 37 new drug approvals) and 2025 (which had 46 new drug approvals), there have been 50 or more new drug approvals in a given year over the past five-year period.