Market share of Medicine

medicine image world medicine market Japan medicine market

Japanese medicine market will remain flat!?

  • Japanese pharmaceutical companies are smaller than American pharmaceutical companies.
  • Takeda has the top share, Astellas is the second, Otsuka is the third.
  • The profit margin of Japanese pharmaceutical companies decrease because of generic drugs.

The market size of medicine in Japan is about seven trillion yen(70 billion dollars) according to the report of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The market size is smaller than USA whose medicine market size is 33 trillion yen(330 billion dollars).

The market size in Japan will remain flat though demand of medicine increases because of aging society. Becuase Japanese government revises drug price many times and promotes a generic drug. Japan has universal health care, ecery Japanese must belong public medical insurance. Japanese governmnet proactively revise drug price to decrease financial burden. It also sets a goal that a generic drug gains a 80% share of the medicine market by 2020.

world medicine market share

The biggest pharmaceutical company in Japan is Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, its sales is 1.7trillion yen(17 billion dollars). Though it is the biggest in Japan, Takeda's sales is rather small in comparison with the sales of Phyzer Inc. The sales of Phyzer is 4.8 trillion yen(48 billion dollars). It is well known that the profit margin of Japanese pharmaceutical compnanies is high depending on medicines for lifestyle disease. However, they cannot keep high profit because some patents of the lifestyle disease medicines expired.

In the pharmaceutical medicine market, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited has the top market share. Takeda's main products are Pioglitazone, Lansoprazole and Candesartan. Pioglitazone is a medicine for diabetes mellitus, Lansoprazole is for digestive ulcer, Candesartan is for hypertension. Takeda bought ARIAD Pharmaceuticals Inc to strengthen developing a new medicine for cancer in 2017.

Astellas Pharma Inc accounts for the second share of pharmaceutical medicine market. Astellas' main product are Xtandi, Vesicare and Prograf. Xtandi is a medicine for prostate cancer, Vesicare is for overactive bladder, Prograf is an immunosuppressive drug. Overseas sales ratio of Astellas is over 60%(USA:30%, EMEA:26%, Asia&Oceania:7%). Daiichi Sankyo accounts for the third share. Its main product is Lixiana(Savaysa) which is an oral anticoagulant drug.

medicine market share(generic drug and pharmaceutical medicine)

On the other hand, Sawai Pharmaceutical Co. has the top market share in the generic drug market. The second is Nichi-iko Pharmaceutical Co., the thrid is Towa Pharmaceutical Co.. The sales of Nichi-iko is larger than Sawai though the share of it is smaller than Sawai. Japanese government proactively promotes a generic drug, but the profit margin of generic drug comapnies decrease becuase of revising drug price.

By the way, the export of medicines from Japan increase year by year. Especailly, the export value of Anticancer drug is increasing. However, Japan has an import surplus about medicines from 2005 because many pharmaceutical companies moved abroad industry and foreign medicines companies have many pipelines with great potential. The import value of it will continue to increase.

Takeda, Astellas and Otsuka are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Foreign investors can invest in them on NYSE by ADR(American Depositary Receipt). In addition, they can do it through many ETFs, MAXIS Nikkei 225 ETF(NKY), iShares MSCI Japan ETF(EWJ), Wisdomtree Japan Hedged ETF(DXJ) and more.