For the 2026 fiscal year, Takeda anticipates declines in revenue and profit, highlighting what CEO-elect Julie Kim says is the need for the company to “invest in future growth.”
Newly elected Takeda CEO Julie Kim will take the reins of a company that is in the midst of a sweeping transformation and anticipates a revenue rut in the coming fiscal year.
FY26 “is a year of transition” for Takeda, Kim told investors and the media Tuesday evening during the Japanese pharma’s annual shareholder meeting. Aside from the change in leadership—Kim is succeeding Christophe Weber, who helmed Takeda for 12 years—the company is also looking to turn its balance sheet around.
Takeda expects its core revenue and profit to be in the red for its 2026 fiscal year, which runs from April 1 to March 31. At constant currencies, core revenue will drop by a low-single-digit percentage, the pharma revealed in its full-year 2025 report earlier this month. Similarly, operating profit will slide by 5% to 8%, while earnings-per-share will take a mid-teens-percentage hit.
These figures remain unchanged, Kim said on Tuesday, adding that the company “will need to invest for future growth.”
On this front, Takeda is looking to three upcoming products that it hopes to launch in the next 12 months, Kim told investors. These include the narcolepsy drug oveporexton, currently under FDA review with a verdict expected in the third quarter. In July 2025, oveporexton, an oral orexin receptor 2 agonist, hit back-to-back late-stage wins, eliciting significant improvements in excessive daytime sleepiness.
Takeda’s growth strategy also involves the polycythemia vera candidate rusfertide, which is also under regulatory review with a Q3 target action date. Phase 3 data shared in June last year showed that 76.9% of patients on rusfertide plus standard of care responded to treatment at 32 weeks, versus 32.9% in placebo.
Closing out Takeda’s trifecta of new potential launches is zasocitinib, a daily pill designed with AI that is being proposed for psoriasis. Late-stage head-to-head data earlier this month demonstrated zasocitinib’s superiority over Bristol Myers Squibb’s Sotyktu at achieving skin clearance at 16 weeks of follow-up.
Delivering successful launches of these three products, if approved, is Takeda’s top priority under Kim, she said Tuesday. The pharma will also ensure “that our core in-line brands remain resilient,” Kim continued, adding that these products—including the anti-inflammatory drug Entyvio and the lymphoma therapy Adcetris—“represent 60% of our revenue, and it is important that we continue to have strong performance” from these brands.
Outside of its product portfolio, Takeda’s growth will also rely on the pharma’s sweeping business reorganization measures, anchored by its new operating model. Kim told investors that she had put that model in place and now intends to push through to fruition. “We have to complete the transformation of the organization,” she said Tuesday.
Since the business overhaul was first announced in March, Takeda has put thousands of roles on the chopping block, with some 4,500 employees worldwide laid off in May. The pharma has also since pruned its partnerships, breaking up with Denali Therapeutics and Veritas In Silico in April.
