The layoffs are part of the company’s shift to a new company structure enabling cost efficiency for its new model.
Privately-held Ferring Pharmaceuticals will part ways with up to 500 employees across its global operations in a bid to “sharpen” its strategic focus and gain “flexibility” as a company.
The layoffs, announced Tuesday, will mean an approximately 7% headcount reduction. Ferring said that it employed 7,500 staff across its headquarters in Switzerland and subsidiaries in more than 50 countries. Aside from the terminations, the strategic initiative could also lead to the “geographic relocations” of certain roles “to better reflect strategic priorities.”
The pharma has already informed workers in “relevant locations” of the layoffs.
Last month, Ferring rolled out a new business model, with the goal of improving its ability to develop novel therapies for patients. Calling it the “Enterprise Model,” the new structure reorganizes Ferring into two distinct areas: the “Core Business,” which will work on improving current products, and the “Portfolio” unit, which will focus on the company’s future growth by conducting clinical trials and building out the pharma’s mid- to late-stage pipeline.
In line with the new model, Ferring’s former chief medical and scientific officer Pierre-Yvez Berclaz took an early retirement, and the pharma formed a new Science Medicine and Development Council to oversee clinical, regulatory, medical affairs and pharmacovigilance operations.
Tuesday’s layoffs will help the pharma align operations with the Enterprise Model, according to the press announcement, helping “improve cost efficiencies” and enable “financial stability and sustainable growth.”
Ferring has an extensive roster of pharmaceutical products across therapeutic areas, including reproductive medicine, gastroenterology, endocrinology and cancer. Among these products is the gene therapy Adstiladrin, which in December 2022 became the industry’s first FDA-approved gene therapy for high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
Last year, Adstiladrin brought in €70 million ($81 million). The pharma named the gene therapy as one of its top growth drivers in 2024, contributing to the company’s overall 8% year-on-year increase in sales, hitting a total of €2.3 billion ($2.68 billion) overall.
Cost efficiencies also played a part in the company’s positive 2024 performance, with an overall cost reduction of 3% year-on-year. In March 2024, Ferring slimmed down staffing at its U.S. headquarters in New Jersey, with 79 people laid off, according to a December 2023 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification posting. In February 2024, 55 Ferring employees in Minnesota were also let go, according to reporting from Fierce Pharma.
