Biogen (Nasdaq: BIIB) reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the first quarter of 2025, helped by surging sales of its rare disease portfolio, even as revenue from its multiple sclerosis franchise continued to decline.
Revenue rose 6% year-on-year to $2.43 billion, beating Wall Street expectations of $2.23 billion. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share came in at $3.02, well above the consensus estimate of $2.52, while GAAP diluted EPS dropped to $1.64 from $2.70 a year earlier, reflecting a $165 million upfront payment related to a new licensing deal.
The company’s rare disease business, led by Skyclarys (omaveloxolone) and Spinraza (nusinersen), delivered a 33% sales increase to $563 million. In contrast, revenue from Biogen’s multiple sclerosis products dropped 11% to $953 million, underlining the continued erosion of this once-core franchise.
Shares of Eli Lilly (LLY) fell in premarket trading Thursday after the pharmaceutical giant's lowered profit projections outweighed first-quarter results that came in above analysts' expectations.
The drugmaker posted adjusted earnings per share of $3.34 on revenue that increased 45% year-over-year to $12.73 billion. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha projected $3.25 and $12.62 billion, respectively.
Sales of Lilly's blockbuster weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound rose to $3.84 billion and $2.31 billion, respectively. Mounjaro sales topped expectations of $3.76 billion and Zepbound fell just short of the $2.33 billion consensus.
Revenue Outlook Affirmed, Profit Forecasts Cut
Lilly affirmed its full-year revenue guidance, but lowered its profit forecasts. Last quarter, it said it expected 2025 revenue between $58.0 to $61.0 billion, with EPS from $22.05 to $23.55, and adjusted EPS of $22.50 to $24.00.
EPS is now forecast within a range of $20.17 to $21.67, while adjusted EPS is now projected at $20.78 to $22.28. The drugmaker said the reduction is due to "net losses on investments in equity securities," along with acquired in-process research and development (IPR&D) charges, which came in at about $1.57 billion in the first quarter.
Kronos Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRON), a biopharmaceutical firm specializing in small molecule therapeutics for cancer and other diseases, announced today it has reached a definitive merger agreement with Concentra Biosciences, LLC. Under the terms of the agreement, Concentra will acquire Kronos Bio for $0.57 per share in cash, along with one non-tradeable contingent value right (CVR) per share. The offer represents a significant discount to the current trading price of $0.89 per share.
The CVR entitles shareholders to receive a portion of net proceeds from the sale of specific product candidates and realized cost savings over a set period following the merger’s completion. The transaction was unanimously approved by the Kronos Bio Board of Directors after a review process aided by financial and legal advisors.
A tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Kronos Bio is set to commence by May 15, 2025, with the merger expected to finalize mid-2025, subject to customary closing conditions. These include the tender of a majority of Kronos Bio’s outstanding shares and the availability of at least $40 million in net cash at closing. Officers, directors, and affiliates holding approximately 27% of Kronos Bio’s common stock have committed to support the merger through tender and support agreements.
When you buy those beautiful cupcakes and cookies at the grocery store, how much plastic are you eating? This is a burning question these days, as Americans have become newly aware of the real content of mainstream food.
MIT professor Retsef Levi has produced remarkable research detailing the extent of the problem of petroleum food dyes in normal products you eat every day. He did an analysis of 700K products in the USDA Global Branded Food Products Database and found over 85K products with at least one dye and some categories having well over 50 percent of products with at least one dye.
As is well known, these products have been credibility associated with behavioral disorders in the young and carcinogens in adults, which is why most countries in the world do not use them. Many dispute those findings, and arguments run in all directions. But these days, there is great concern about chronic disease in the young and a strong effort to address the issue through every means.
It makes sense that U.S. producers align themselves more with natural rather than synthetic dyes. It’s rather remarkable that the practice has continued as long as it has. Foreign travelers in the United States fear U.S. food in part for this reason. They would rather eat food, not plastic, and worry about what is really in our bright, delicious-looking, packaged foods.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at HHS and Dr. Marty Makary at the FDA have taken aim at six of these dyes (in addition to two already identified under the last administration) and have scheduled them to be phased out as part of the agenda to make America healthy again. In this, they have faced remarkably little pushback. Few are willing to stand up in defense of synthetic dyes in our food and most people have a sense that we would be better off without.
This is why so far, the agreements to get rid of them are voluntary. They rely on cooperative understandings with industry rather than mandates. This seems right to me.
I’m of a libertarian cast of mind and generally feel like people should eat whatever they want. It’s up to the consumer and not government to decide such questions. Producers should use whatever ingredients customers want, and it does seem as if these products on the ban list have more or less been approved by the consumer marketplace.
In principle, I agree with Jeffrey Singer: “The HHS and FDA regulatory monopolies should not infringe on adults’ autonomy to choose less expensive or more visually appealing foods containing these substances, if they wish. Autonomous adults must have the freedom to make their own risk-benefit assessments.”
As usual, however, the situation is more complicated than merely freedom of choice or bans by the government. Vast amounts of the U.S. food industry benefits from subsidies in the form of SNAP benefits and school lunches, among other programs. These provide a high margin of profitability for the producers.
Government is the consumer in this case, and not a very discerning one. Producers manufacture products that sell well for particular industrial purposes. These often require very long shelf lives and the ability to sustain the look and feel of food from having traveled long distances in challenging temperatures.
It makes sense that petroleum and synthetic products make the journey from factory to shelf more easily than natural dyes like fruit juices and spices. The look is entirely different when using real food dyes. I was at a Vietnamese superstore that sells none of the synthetic products because no one would ever buy them. I looked at the colors of the sweets. They are certainly more dull and less optically appealing. On the other hand, they look like food used to look.
I shop often at local markets and trade with local bakeries so I don’t see much of these fake colors in food. Farmers markets don’t use them. On the other hand, these cater to a customer who is health- conscious and pays for the real deal. Most people do not do this.
An investigation into how these synthetic dyes got in our food takes us far back in time to the very first federal food regulation measure of 1906 that centered on regulating the meat-packing industry. The cover story was that it was eliminating unhealthy and dangerous practices. In reality, and as unpacked by many historians, the dominant lobbyists in the text and implementation of the controls were the major industrial firms.
This is how “poke and sniff” became the dominant way meat was inspected in this country. It was the opposite of safe and ended up spreading disease. But it also resulted in much higher costs for the industry that only the biggest players could bear. The practical effect was to drive out small meat packing companies and bolster a growing cartel in the industry. The 1906 act was not really about stopping bad practices, it was about entrenching large businesses as the controlling force of industrial planning.
This was only the beginning of what ended up being a century-long consolidation of the food industry. It firmed up at the New Deal, which implemented a central plan for agriculture complete with production limits, mandates, subsidies, and controls. Price controls in World War II strengthened it further. The mad dash toward gigantic food-production subsidies in the early 1970s consolidated the industry ever more.
Independent farmers were the ones who suffered.
What was being created here was not a “free market” but a food cartel that discriminated hard against small farms and local food and in favor of centralized and industrial methods of production. Ask any local farmer or rancher about the struggles they face. The regulatory barriers are huge and the mandates all-consuming. They cannot simply raise food and sell it. They face a barrage of investigations and regulatory hoops.
A free market is exactly what they want. But it doesn’t exist. They will tell you that the big producers in the market have all the advantages over them wheres they would be fine a genuinely competitive market.
Food production and distribution in the United States is famously consolidated. What seems like infinite choice at the supermarket is really an illusion. Depending on the product, the dominant producers are usually one of the big four: PepsiCo, Tyson, Nestlé, and Kraft. The smaller producers are in the mix but face intractable barriers.
The problem with corporate consolidation is that it creates uniform industrial practices designed less for the consumer and more for the well-being of the company and its systems. These dyes have been fine for that purpose, and perpetuated themselves without an adequate system of feedback from the market they serve.
This is a reason not to blame the free market for unhealthy food. We don’t have a free market. We have a corporatist system in which the biggest players rely on close cooperation with the FDA and other regulatory agencies to protect and consolidate their market share. They get away with practices that otherwise would be punished in a real market with consumer-based accountability.
There is an additional problem with the existence of the FDA itself. Most Americans believe that because of its presence, anything for sale at the store has necessarily been certified as safe and fine to eat. If something says it is healthy, it surely is.
In a genuine market economy without such an overlay of constant assurance from government, we might develop more of a habit of questioning the claims of producers or seeking out better sources of information. There would surely be private and accurate sources to which we could appeal.
In electronics, for example, Underwriters Laboratory has long certified the safety of products. It is not a government institution and gets no support from government so far as I can tell. It makes money entirely from fees from producers who pay to have their products certified as safe. If the company fails in its duties, it would face a huge blowback. The system works.
The FDA, on the other hand, has long presided over a system largely captured by industrial lobbyists, shared patent revenue, revolving doors of regulators from and to industry, and conflicts of interest that are rampant throughout the whole process of food and drug approvals.
The system is deeply compromised to the point that it blesses certain practices in production and distribution that could never survive a legitimate market test. They dominate precisely because market forces are not allowed to operate to enable a correction.
For this reason, and despite my preference for freedom in all matters, I’m not unhappy about the pushes against synthetic food dyes that are now being enacted. Arguably, this should just be the beginning, a course correction. The agencies have served to ratify and protect practices that otherwise would not have survived in a genuine marketplace.
Freedom of choice is essential but so is informed choice and a truly competitive marketplace.
So far this year, employers have announced 602,493, the highest year-to-date total since 2020 when 1,017,812 job cuts were recorded, according to the latest data from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
It is up 87% from the 322,043 cuts announced during the same period in 2024.
The Government leads all sectors in job cuts this year with 282,227; 281,452 of which are attributed to DOGE-related cost-cutting.
This is up 680% from the 36,195 job cuts announced in this sector through April 2024. In April, the number of job cuts announced in this industry was 2,782. DOGE actions were attributed to 2,731, while the rest were attributed to “Economic Conditions” and “Cost-Cutting.”
“DOGE Actions” lead all job cut reasons in 2025 with 283,172; 2,919 of which occurred in April. Another 6,945 cuts were attributed to “DOGE Downstream Impact” through April, primarily at Non-Profits and Education organizations. These reasons combined (290,117) make up 48% of all job cuts announced so far in 2025.
Market/Economic Conditions were cited for 95,348 job cuts, as economic uncertainty, consumer spending, and trade difficulties impact US-companies.
Tariffs were cited for 1,413 cuts so far this year, with 1,350 occurring in April. Restructuring accounted for 67,627, and 60,551 were due to store, unit, or location “Closing.”
This weak labor market data comes on the heels of yesterday's dismal ADP Employment report.
This morning we see initial jobless claims jump notably too - to 241k (higher than the 223k expected). While not out of recent norms, this is a sizable jump...
Source: Bloomberg
Interestingly, New York dominated the surge in initial claims...
Continuing jobless claims also surged last week, back above 1.9 million Americans - its highest since Nov 2021...
Continuing claims for the 'Deep TriState' rose significantly last week...
Source: Bloomberg
Still, in context, it seems CEOs are all willing to whine about the economy but their actions speak louder than their words...
“Though the Government cuts are front and center, we saw job cuts across sectors last month. Generally, companies are citing the economy and new technology. Employers are slow to hire and limiting hiring plans as they wait and see what will happen with trade, supply chain, and consumer spending,” Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President and workplace expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
...and none of this is a good sign for tomorrow's all-important payrolls print.
Last November, Americans sent a clear election message and delivered President Trump a clear mandate: Prices are way too high. While inflation has hit our grocery stores (up 23.6% since 2020) and housing costs (up 30.9% since 2020), there’s another cost outpacing the rest when it comes to price hikes. Prescription drugs have jumped 46.2% since 2020, forcing Americans to pay the highest price in the world for life-saving medications. No wonder citizens are angry.
In 2022, Congress passed legislation that gave the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) the authority to negotiate lower drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries for the first time. As this administration targets cost-saving measures across government, this program is projected to save billions of dollars, with an estimated $1.5 billion in savings for seniors next year alone and $100 billion in total taxpayer savings over 10 years.
Thankfully, President Trump knows how to negotiate. With his leadership, Medicare negotiation could be just the start in a larger effort to earn a better deal for Americans on prescription drugs. This issue presents an enormous opportunity for the president to bolster his legacy by protecting and expanding the government’s ability to crack down on corrupt lobbyists and special interests and allow the government to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers to lower prescription drug prices for the American people.
This issue is not new to President Trump, who has long railed against the corruption and greed in the pharmaceutical industry. He recognizes that “we pay, as a country, so much more for drugs because of the drug lobbies,” whom he says are “getting away with murder.” Trump’s solution? “Tougher negotiation [and] more competition [will lead to] much lower prices.” As one of the early voices calling for Medicare to negotiate drug prices back in 2016, this is his moment to make this promise into reality.
Now that he’s back in the White House, Trump can reaffirm his commitment to reducing costs for seniors and cutting government spending, two of his biggest priorities. Consistent with his clear mission to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, he has already begun to implement this cost-saving plan by supporting and defending Medicare’s ability to negotiate lower drug prices.
If the drug lobby is successful in fighting against Trump by rolling back Medicare’s negotiation authority, the biggest winners would be – you guessed it – pharmaceutical companies, which would return to charging inflated prices, forcing both the government and everyday Americans to bear the cost, increasing prices of prescription drugs by a shocking 46.2%, effectively doubling their cost.
President Trump has long been a vocal critic of Big Pharma. His leadership can yet again make him the strongest voice ever in holding the industry accountable. Backing policies that rein in drug prices would be a major victory not just for his administration, but for every American family.
I know President Trump will continue to fight for the American people because he understands that Americans should never be taken advantage of by the drug lobby. This is President Trump’s chance to do it big by standing up to Big Pharma and ensuring drug prices come down. That’s a deal that every American can get behind.
Steve Cortes is a former advisor to President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance and a former commentator on Fox News and CNN.
The Chinese regime is increasingly sending groups that pose as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the United Nations in an effort to suppress criticism of its human rights record, according to a report published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on April 28.
The opening session of the 38th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 18, 2018. Alain Grosclaude/AFP/Getty Images
The 10-month investigation, a partnership between the ICIJ and 42 media organizations, examined China’s transnational repression under Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Part of the report focused on the communist regime’s subversion campaign against the U.N. Human Rights Council through “a growing army of Chinese NGOs.”
“Since Xi’s reelection as Communist Party general secretary in 2017 and president the following year, China has sought greater influence within the U.N. human rights system and become more aggressive in silencing dissent,” the report reads.
ICIJ found that the number of Chinese NGOs holding consultative status with the U.N. has nearly doubled since 2018.
NGOs can participate in U.N. meetings, make oral statements, and submit written statements before U.N. sessions after obtaining consultative status, which is granted by the U.N. Economic and Social Council.
An ICIJ analysis of 106 NGOs from China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan found that 59 are not independent but are “closely connected” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The ICIJ referred to these Beijing-backed NGOs as “GONGOs” or “government-organized nongovernmental organizations.”
Ten of these GONGOs receive more than 50 percent of their funding from Beijing, the ICIJ noted.
In at least 46 of these groups, directors, secretaries, vice presidents, or other high-ranking staff also hold positions in the Chinese regime’s departments or within the CCP.
Additionally, 53 of these NGOs pledge loyalty to the CCP on their websites or in other official documents. Among them, 12 agree to defer their decision-making to the Party, such as leadership appointments.
“In 2024, 33 Chinese NGOs showed up about 300 times on the lists of speakers at Human Rights Council sessions. There were only three of them in 2018. None criticized China,” the report reads.
Rana Siu Inboden, senior fellow at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, was quoted in the report as saying that Beijing “is clearly using NGOs as a tool.”
“They are encouraging them, helping them, guiding them, coaching them through how to get this [consultative] status,” Inboden said. “And then once they’re [at the U.N.], you can see how their statements, whether it’s in the Human Rights Council or elsewhere, serve the government.”
China’s Tactics
Delegates from the Beijing-backed groups seek to “disrupt and drown out” criticism of China, heap praise on the CCP, and monitor and intimidate those who come to Geneva to testify against China.
“It’s corrosive. It’s dishonest. It’s subversive,” Michèle Taylor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council from February 2022 to January this year, was quoted as saying in the ICIJ’s findings.
Beijing-backed groups “are masquerading as NGOs” as part of a broader effort by the CCP “to obfuscate their own human rights violations and reshape the narrative around China’s actions and culpabilities,” Taylor said.
The ICIJ and its media partners spoke to 15 activists and lawyers dedicated to China’s human rights who “described being surveilled or harassed by people suspected to be proxies for the Chinese government,” according to the report. These incidents happened both inside the United Nations and in Geneva at large.
Some activists said that their relatives, whom they believed were pressured by Chinese authorities, had urged them to cease their public activism or cautioned them about the risks of their actions, according to the ICIJ.
The report cites an incident in March 2024, when some rights activists refused to set foot inside the U.N. buildings, out of fear that Beijing’s presence could result in retribution against their families in China.
“Instead, they gathered for a secret meeting on the top floor of a nondescript office building nearby. They were there to discuss human rights abuses in China and Hong Kong with the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk,” the ICIJ said.
In January last year, China was among several countries that underwent a peer review process called the “Universal Periodic Review” before the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Rushan Abbas, cofounder of the U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs, told ICIJ that after she and other NGO delegates entered the U.N. building where China’s review was being held, “those Chinese GONGOs were taking pictures of us.”
“I did not report [this] to the U.N. authorities because I lost faith in them, as China was acting ... like the U.N. was its playground,” Abbas was quoted as saying in the report.
The ICIJ said that independent organizations now have a greater responsibility to speak out about atrocities due to the rise of autocracy around the world.
“If China’s power continues to go unchecked by U.N. authorities, it threatens the credibility of the institution in its efforts to monitor and document violations and abuses not just in China, but all over the world,” the group said.
