Fol­low­ing a block­buster 2024, Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics is con­sid­er­ing build­ing a sixth man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty to meet the ris­ing de­mand for bi­o­log­ics as it gears up to open its fifth site in April.

Dur­ing the an­nu­al JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co this week, Sam­sung Bio hint­ed that it might con­struct its sixth fac­to­ry to bring its to­tal ca­pac­i­ty to 964,000 liters, ac­cord­ing to a Tues­day press re­lease. The CD­MO is await­ing board ap­proval for the new site.

Last year, the com­pa­ny seemed to buck the trend of CD­MOs strug­gling: Mer­ck KGaA, Catal­ent, Avid Bioser­vices and Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic all saw man­u­fac­tur­ing rev­enue dip dur­ing at least one quar­ter in 2024. Sam­sung Bio, by con­trast, se­cured mul­ti­ple bil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts with cus­tomers and re­port­ed quar­ter­ly rev­enue jumps. Sam­sung in­tends to build on this growth by open­ing its fifth man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, dubbed Plant 5, in April this year.

Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries is pre­dict­ing 2025 to be as tough as last year for CD­MOs as phar­ma cus­tomers con­tin­ue to cut costs with man­u­fac­tur­ers.

The com­pa­ny ex­pects its rev­enue for 2025 to de­cline in a sim­i­lar fash­ion as last year, ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing pub­lished on Tues­day. Charles Riv­er’s over­all rev­enue de­clined dur­ing each quar­ter of 2024, most re­cent­ly by 1.6% in Q3, 3.2% in Q2 and 1.7% in Q1.

Charles Riv­er’s stock $CRL was down 6.2% Tues­day morn­ing. William Blair an­a­lysts were “dis­ap­point­ed” in the com­pa­ny’s out­look for this year, which missed their rev­enue growth es­ti­mate of 1%, ac­cord­ing to an an­a­lyst re­port.

The ser­vice provider an­tic­i­pates phar­ma cus­tomers will con­tin­ue to cut their spend­ing with third-par­ty man­u­fac­tur­ers as they re­struc­ture pro­grams and repri­or­i­tize their pipelines. The com­pa­ny’s CEO James Fos­ter had al­ready warned in­vestors these head­winds would per­sist in­to 2025 dur­ing its sec­ond-quar­ter earn­ings in Au­gust.

Eli Lil­ly ex­pects to miss its re­cent rev­enue es­ti­mate for 2024 by about $400 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to a pre­lim­i­nary re­port.

The com­pa­ny’s es­ti­mates have var­ied wide­ly this year. Lil­ly raised its 2024 rev­enue pro­jec­tions mul­ti­ple times be­fore tem­per­ing those ex­pec­ta­tions in the third quar­ter. Now ex­ec­u­tives are say­ing the ac­tu­al fig­ure will be around $45 bil­lion, which is $400 mil­lion be­low the low end of its third-quar­ter pro­jec­tion, but still above the mid­point of its first-time es­ti­mate.

In­vestors sent Lil­ly’s stock LLY down 7% on Tues­day af­ter­noon, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment.

David Risinger, an an­a­lyst with the in­vest­ment bank Leerink Part­ners, said in a note to in­vestors that this is the “sec­ond quar­ter in a row of dis­ap­point­ing re­sults" for Lil­ly. How­ev­er, he added that the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial and R&D prospects in 2025 and be­yond are “en­cour­ag­ing,” specif­i­cal­ly Lil­ly’s Phase 3 oral GLP-1 can­di­date for weight loss and di­a­betes, or­for­glipron.

US reg­u­la­tors have re­ject­ed a T cell ther­a­py for a rare and se­ri­ous trans­plant com­pli­ca­tion re­lat­ed to Ep­stein-Barr virus from Atara Bio­ther­a­peu­tics and Pierre Fab­re.

The ther­a­py, known as tab­ele­cleu­cel or tab-cel, was turned away af­ter the FDA in­spect­ed a third-par­ty man­u­fac­tur­ing site, Atara said in a Thurs­day press re­lease. FDA's re­jec­tion let­ter "did not iden­ti­fy any de­fi­cien­cies" re­lat­ed to the man­u­fac­tur­ing of the ther­a­py it­self, nor any con­cerns over ef­fi­ca­cy or safe­ty da­ta, Atara said. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it will not be re­quired to run an­oth­er clin­i­cal tri­al.

Atara's stock price ATRA fell more than 45% on Thurs­day morn­ing.

In­di­an CD­MO Ara­gen Life Sci­ences has se­cured a $100 mil­lion in­vest­ment from Sin­ga­pore-head­quar­tered pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm Quadria Cap­i­tal.

Ara­gen will use the in­vest­ment to ex­pand its fa­cil­i­ties to meet grow­ing de­mand from US and Eu­ro­pean cus­tomers for its dis­cov­ery and man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, CEO Man­ni Kan­tipu­di said in a Mon­day press re­lease. No fur­ther de­tails were giv­en. Ara­gen has six lo­ca­tions in In­dia as well as sales of­fices in Tokyo, Japan and South Ko­rea.

Quadria will get a mi­nor­i­ty stake in the man­u­fac­tur­er, val­ued at around $1.4 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the re­lease. The pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm will be the sec­ond in­vestor in Ara­gen, fol­low­ing Gold­man Sachs who in­vest­ed in May 2021. Quadria has in­vest­ed in oth­er CD­MOs pre­vi­ous­ly, in­clud­ing In­di­an-based Akums Drugs and En­cube Eth­i­cals, as well as Malaysia-based Straits Or­thopaedics.