Why Fresenius Kabi Just Spent €750 Million on a Company It Already Owned

Perhaps most interesting is a partnership with Sandoz to develop an early-stage emicizumab biosimilar for haemophilia A, a rare blood disorder. That deal pushes mAbxience into rare disease territory, which is new ground for the platform.

By taking full ownership, Fresenius now controls the entire value chain: research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization. No more sharing decisions with a co-owner. No more negotiating over strategy at the board level.

The Patent Cliff Is a Gold Rush

To understand why Fresenius wrote this check, you need to understand the single most important trend in pharma right now: the biologic patent cliff.

Over the next few years, some of the best-selling drugs in human history will lose their patent protection. We're not talking about simple pills you can copy in a generic lab. These are complex biologic medicines (proteins grown in living cells) that require specialized manufacturing to replicate. Making a biosimilar is more like brewing craft beer than photocopying a recipe.

The timeline is stacked. In 2025, biosimilar competition began for blockbusters like Stelara and Eylea. By 2028, Keytruda, one of the most prescribed cancer immunotherapies on the planet, faces patent expiration.

The biosimilar market reflects this momentum. One projection puts it at $193.2 billion by 2035, growing at a 17% annual clip. By the end of 2025, the FDA had already approved 96 biosimilars, including 25 classified as interchangeable with the original product.

But here's the catch: manufacturing capacity hasn't kept up. Building biologic manufacturing facilities takes years. You need specialized cell-culture capacity, fill-finish lines, analytical development labs, and armies of trained scientists. One market report found that 16 complex biologics will lose patent protection between 2025 and 2034, yet no biosimilars are currently in development for many of them. That's a supply gap the size of a canyon.

Why Full Ownership Matters More Than You Think

When Fresenius bought 55% of mAbxience in 2022 for €495 million upfront (plus milestones), the original deal included a put/call option on the remaining 45%. In plain English: both sides agreed upfront that full ownership was always the destination. This wasn't a surprise move; it was the plan all along.

But the timing matters. Fresenius has spent the last four years building out its biopharma division as one of three core growth pillars, a strategy it calls "Vision 2026." The company launched Tyenne in the EU and Idacio and Stimufend in the U.S. during 2023, marking major commercial milestones. Management has said it expects biopharma sales to triple or quadruple from 2022 to 2026.

Full ownership of mAbxience gives Fresenius something critical as that growth accelerates: speed. When you co-own a manufacturing platform, every investment decision, every capacity expansion, every new pipeline bet requires alignment between partners. When you own 100%, you just do it.

In a market where the winners will be whoever can develop, manufacture, and launch biosimilars fastest against the patent cliff, that operational agility is worth a lot. Maybe even €750 million.

The Bigger Picture

Market watchers seem to agree this deal is solid but not transformational. The real test won't be whether the acquisition was smart (it almost certainly was). It'll be whether mAbxience can actually deliver visible revenue and margin growth from biosimilar launches and contract manufacturing wins.

Fresenius is betting that owning the full stack, from molecule to market, positions it to capture an outsized share of the biosimilar wave. The biopharma unit hit EBITDA breakeven in 2024 after years of heavy investment. Now it needs to prove the growth thesis.

The patent cliff isn't coming. It's already here. And Fresenius just made sure it owns every tool in the shed before the real work begins.

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