Amid the flurry of biopharma news at last month’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference was a Reuters article on Novo Holdings’ growth plans for Catalent, following its recently completed $16.5 billion acquisition of the contract development and manufacturing organization. Pharma Manufacturing last week reached out to Novo Holdings and can now confirm that the global life sciences investment firm intends to double Catalent’s size over five years.
A Novo Holdings spokesperson confirmed to Pharma Manufacturing that the statement provided by Jonathan Levy, senior partner at Novo Principal Investments, to Reuters in a Jan. 16 article “still holds” — while declining to comment on the specifics of the Catalent growth strategy.
Citing Levy, who led the $16.5 billion megadeal, Reuters reported last month that Novo Holdings — the controlling shareholder of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk — “hopes to double the size of its recently acquired contract drugmaker Catalent over five years.”
While saying that he didn’t want to overcommit to a revenue target before having a chance to set out a corporate strategy with Catalent’s management, Levy told Reuters that “doubling the size of your business over five years is always a nice barometer to work on, and I think we could do something more here from an enterprise value perspective.”
Reuters reported that, according to Levy, Catalent — which had sales of $4.38 billion in 2024 — will hold its next board meeting this month.
“We are excited to continue to grow the Catalent business and to maintain and expand relationships with its customers,” a Novo Holdings spokesperson said in a statement to Pharma Manufacturing last week.
Catalent CEO Alessandro Maselli, who was interviewed in a live event by Endpoints News at last month’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, made no mention at that time of the company’s growth strategy over the next few years but said “with our new partners, Novo Holdings, we’re going to be stronger than ever — it’s great news for our customers.”
In October 2024, Maselli in an open letter to customers said Catalent’s network of 50 global sites — once acquired by Novo Holdings — would continue to “offer fill and finish services for sterile products for large and small molecules, including gene and cell therapies — areas in which we continue to invest and expand.”
At the time, Maselli said a key factor in his decision to continue in his role as CEO of Catalent was the commitment of Novo Holdings to “provide support and capital to ensure unparalleled service to our customers and create new jobs as we drive Catalent’s growth.”
In a statement last week to Pharma Manufacturing, a Novo Holdings spokesperson said in “this period of transition” the priority is to ensure that all Catalent employees and customers “remain unaffected by the change in ownership,“ while delivering the same high level of service.
$16.5 billion megadeal
Novo Holdings rocked the industry with its February 2024 announcement that it would acquire global contract development and manufacturing organization Catalent in a $16.5 billion megadeal. In December 2024, the acquisition was completed and the CDMO became a private company.
“We look forward to supporting the Catalent team as they build on their positive momentum and position the company for future growth,” Levy, senior partner at Novo Holdings, said in a statement at the time.
In a separate but related acquisition also completed in December, Novo Nordisk paid Novo Holdings $11 billion to take over three Catalent fill-finish sites in Belgium, Indiana, and Italy. The three fill-finish sites are much-needed manufacturing assets to boost production of Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic and weight-loss medication Wegovy.
CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen in a Feb. 5 earnings call with analysts said the Catalent acquisition “supports our ongoing scaling efforts and will expand the Novo Nordisk global fill and finish footprint from 11 to 14 sites.”
Earlier this month, Novo Nordisk disclosed that it will spend approximately $9 billion in 2025 to “create additional capacity across the supply chain,” according to its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That amount is an increase from the nearly $6.3 billion the Danish drugmaker earmarked in 2024 to bolster its manufacturing capabilities and similar projects.
Looking at the CDMO industry over the next few years, Catalent’s Maselli told Endpoints News at last month’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that he expects “there will continue to be consolidation towards the big players.” To help their customers, CDMOs “need to have the capabilities, infrastructure, and scale to do that,” according to Maselli, who said that “Catalent works on between 500 and 1,000 molecules at any point in time.”
