With a new CEO set to take over next month and three major launches planned for 2026 and 2027, the Japanese drugmaker says Takeda is poised to eradicate the generic decline that has plagued its earnings in recent years as it looks to a “new era” marked by accelerated growth.
But thousands of employees won’t be entering the company’s new chapter.
At its full-year financial results briefing (PDF) on May 13, Takeda Pharmaceutical revealed details of its 2026 “transformation program,” which aims to centralize corporate functions, reduce management layers, and simplify processes.
The company said the multi-year slimdown is expected to reach approximately 4,500 roles during fiscal year 2026, resulting in restructuring costs of approximately 170 billion yen ($1.07 billion) and total savings of approximately 100 billion yen ($633 million) in 2026. It is expected to save more than 200 billion yen ($1.26 billion) annually by 2028.
Takeda Pharmaceutical recently cabled a series of job cuts in the United States, impacting 634 roles assigned to the company’s U.S. headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of a $1.26 billion efficiency drive.
The restructuring follows a company-wide efficiency program from 2024 to 2025, which affected more than 4,000 positions over two years, Takeda noted.
Takeda Pharmaceutical’s cost-cutting efforts began in 2024, when sales of its blockbuster attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder treatment Vyvanse plummeted in the face of expiring patents and generic drugs flooding the market, a struggle that has dogged the organization ever since. The company predicted last year that 2025 would be the last year of major generic headwinds for Vyvanse, and Takeda hopes three upcoming new launches will help put Vyvanse-related sales woes behind it.
The company expects full-year sales of 4.64 trillion yen ($29.4 billion) for fiscal year 2026, which ends in March 2027, reflecting “headwinds from a portfolio that matured in a year of pivoting to new product launches,” the company said in a presentation.
New launches include potential regulatory approvals for Takeda’s three key late-stage assets in the narcolepsy treatment obepolexton, the polycythemia vera candidate lusfertide, and the psoriasis treatment zasocitinib. Ovepolextone and rasfertide have both received FDA priority review and could be commercially launched in the U.S. in the second half of 2026, while the company is making “drastic investments” to support regulatory filing for zasotitonib later this year.
“We are very excited about these three announcements and are fully committed to their execution,” incoming CEO Julie Kim said on an earnings call with investors.
Kim said in the release that Takeda is outlining the transformation in two phases as the company focuses on transitioning to a “new group of blockbuster brands” that will deliver “long-term profitable growth and patient impact.”
The first step, dubbed “Horizon One,” will see the company establish three new growth drivers while ensuring the “resiliency and competitiveness” of its core inline brands. ‘Horizon Two’ will then launch a new wave of late-stage pipeline assets to maximize returns from initial launches.
Takeda will enter fiscal year 2026 with free cash flow of 684.5 billion yen ($4.3 billion) after full-year 2025 sales of 4.5 trillion yen ($28.3 billion), down 1.7% from a year earlier.
More than half (51%) of the company’s annual revenue comes from a collection of growth and new launches, including blockbuster inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment Entyvio and hereditary angioedema (HAE) treatment Taxylo.
The company’s growth product selection across its six major business areas generated combined annual revenue of 2.3 trillion yen ($14.5 billion) and “partially cushioned” the continued impact of Vyvanse’s generic erosion. The company said in a presentation that total sales of Vyvanse and other products affected by patent expirations were down 43% for the year.
Takeda’s full-year 2025 results conference call was the last under longtime CEO Christoph Weber, who took over the pharmaceutical company in 2015 after a 20-year career at GSK.
Webber is the first foreign CEO in the company’s more than 200-year history and is credited with “building Takeda into the company it is today,” Kim said on the conference call. Kim, who joined Takeda in 2019, has been leading the company’s U.S. operations since 2022 and was selected as CEO as part of a “thoughtful and intentional” succession process, Weber noted.
