Drug­mak­ers will like­ly be able to han­dle the im­pacts of the third round of Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions, an­a­lysts say, even as the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try con­tin­ues to crit­i­cize the Biden-era pro­gram.

On Tues­day, CMS un­veiled the next 15 drugs up for ne­go­ti­a­tion, which in­clude Ab­b­Vie’s Botox, Eli Lil­ly’s di­a­betes drug Trulic­i­ty, and Gilead’s HIV treat­ment Bik­tarvy. An­a­lysts said some of the drugs were wide­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed to make the list. They cit­ed past ne­go­ti­a­tions, up­com­ing patent loss­es and new drug de­vel­op­ment as some rea­sons why the po­ten­tial im­pacts may be mod­est.

“With pri­or rounds of pric­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions rea­son­able, and sev­er­al of these med­i­cines set to lose ex­clu­siv­i­ty in the near-term, we con­tin­ue to ex­pect that the im­pacts will be man­age­able,” BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets an­a­lyst Evan Seiger­man said in a note to in­vestors.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is ask­ing a fed­er­al court to halt a case over the abor­tion pill mifepri­s­tone while the FDA un­der­takes a re­view of the drug’s safe­ty pro­to­cols.

An on­go­ing mifepri­s­tone re­view could re­sult in su­per­sed­ing guid­ance that ren­ders the case moot, gov­ern­ment lawyers wrote in a memo on Tues­day. Louisiana is su­ing to over­turn changes made to the pil­l's Risk Eval­u­a­tion and Mit­i­ga­tion Strat­e­gy (REMS) in 2023, which re­moved an in-per­son dis­pens­ing re­quire­ment.

Cit­ing an up­dat­ed FDA web­page on mifepri­s­tone, lawyers said the agency is work­ing to col­lect more da­ta ahead of a "well-con­trolled study with ad­e­quate sta­tis­ti­cal pow­er." De­spite say­ing that work like this of­ten takes "ap­prox­i­mate­ly a year or more to con­duct," the FDA says it's hop­ing to com­plete it quick­er.

Te­va says its lat­est earn­ings show it has of­fi­cial­ly trans­formed from a pure-play gener­ics man­u­fac­tur­er in­to a bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny.

“The hard clin­i­cal fact is we are not 'try­ing' to do it, but we’ve done it,” CEO Richard Fran­cis told End­points News in an in­ter­view af­ter the com­pa­ny’s earn­ings call. Al­though Te­va ex­pects to lose about $1.1 bil­lion in rev­enue this year for its gener­ic ver­sion of Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s Revlim­id, Fran­cis em­pha­sized that its gross mar­gin, free cash flow and EBIT­DA are all grow­ing.

“How can any com­pa­ny lose that much rev­enue yet still grow those parts of the P&L? The pri­ma­ry way we’ve been able to do it is by hav­ing in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts on the mar­ket — Auste­do, Ajovy and Uzedy — that con­tin­ue to dri­ve growth at very strong rates,” Fran­cis said.

More than a year af­ter Lon­za an­nounced it will sell its cap­sules and health busi­ness, the Swiss CD­MO said it has yet to fi­nal­ize the deal with a buy­er.

A spokesper­son said it has mul­ti­ple po­ten­tial bid­ders, but de­clined to add fur­ther de­tails on who they were, how many there are, and when it hopes to close a trans­ac­tion. Lon­za first an­nounced the di­vesti­ture of its CHI busi­ness back in De­cem­ber 2024. “Lon­za con­tin­ues to ad­vance the CHI carve‑out and ex­it process as planned,” the spokesper­son added.

To po­ten­tial­ly help it se­cure a buy­er, Lon­za said on Wednes­day its CHI busi­ness saw a re­turn to growth in 2025. Sales rose 3.9% for the year af­ter they de­clined mul­ti­ple times through­out 2024.