Sandoz bets on its own new biosimilar unit with a veteran hire

A structural reorganization and a key appointment reveal a company that has moved beyond proving itself and is now building for dominance

On March 9, Sandoz Group AG (SIX: SDZ) announced it was creating a dedicated global biosimilar development, manufacturing and supply unit — a structural reorganization that consolidates the company’s entire biosimilar pipeline under unified leadership. Appointed to run it: Armin Metzger, described in the announcement as an industry veteran with deep experience in biologics manufacturing and supply chain operations.

What this reorganization actually signals

To understand why this matters, you need the numbers. Sandoz posted full-year 2025 revenue of $11.09 billion, with biosimilar sales surging 13% at constant currency to $3.29 billion — now representing 30% of total revenue, up from 28% the prior year. The company’s stock surged 24% on earnings day, capping a remarkable 63% gain over the past year. This is not a company in trouble. This is a company that has won the first phase of its existence as an independent entity — spun out of Novartis in 2023 — and is now restructuring for the next, much larger phase.

Creating a dedicated biosimilar unit separate from the rest of the business is a deliberate organizational signal: biosimilars are no longer a product line within a generics company. They are the core business, and they now get their own command structure.

CEO Richard Saynor has publicly framed the next decade as a “golden decade” for affordable medicines, with Sandoz targeting some 60% of a $322 billion biosimilar opportunity as more than 50 biologic drugs go off patent in the next seven years with no biosimilars lined up to replace them. A dedicated unit with veteran leadership is how you operationalize that ambition.

The pipeline that justifies the structure

Sandoz currently boasts an industry-leading biosimilar pipeline of 27 assets targeting approximately $320 billion in originator sales.

The launch calendar for 2026 alone is formidable. Following a patent settlement with Regeneron, Sandoz is cleared to launch Enzeevu — its biosimilar of the blockbuster eye drug Eylea — in the fourth quarter of 2026 or earlier under certain circumstances. The European Commission also recently approved Ranluspec, Lupin’s biosimilar for which Sandoz is the commerctialization partner in the most of EU, ranibizumab biosimilar referencing Genentech’s Lucentis, with a launch expected in the second half of 2026. A press release from Lupin confirms that Ranluspec is Lupin’s biosimilar, and Sandoz is the commercialization partner in the EU Meanwhile, Pyzchiva, its ustekinumab biosimilar (developed by Samsung Bioepis and is commercialized by Sandoz in the US ), continues gaining traction in the US with biosimilar market participation expanding quarter after quarter.

This is a company managing simultaneous launches across multiple therapeutic areas — immunology, ophthalmology, oncology, neurology — in multiple markets. Without a dedicated organizational unit to coordinate development, manufacturing, and supply across that pipeline, the complexity becomes unmanageable.

The manufacturing challenge behind the headline

Biosimilar manufacturing is genuinely hard. Unlike small-molecule generics, biologics are produced in living cells, requiring highly controlled processes that are extremely sensitive to variations. Scaling a biosimilar from development to commercial production without loss of quality or consistency is one of the most demanding challenges in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Sandoz’s acquisition of Just-Evotec Biologics EU SAS provided access to proprietary continuous manufacturing technology, positioning it as one of the few biosimilar companies with comprehensive in-house capabilities from development through commercial supply. The new unit under Metzger is designed to leverage exactly that vertical integration — connecting the development pipeline directly to manufacturing and supply in a way that speeds time to market and protects margins.

The investor angle

For 2026, Sandoz has guided revenue growth of mid-to-high single digits at constant currency, with core EBITDA margin expansion to approximately 22.5% — and that guidance explicitly excludes any material contribution from a potential generic semaglutide launch, if it materializes, would be one of the most commercially significant generic launches in pharmaceutical history given the explosive demand for GLP-1 drugs.

Sandoz is building the organizational infrastructure to execute on a pipeline that could define the next decade of affordable medicine — and doing so while the biosimilar market is still in its early innings in the world’s largest market, the United States.

As Sandoz’s own executives have noted, the FDA is now approving biosimilars faster than any other regulator in the world, and adoption — once it takes hold — can be very high. A company that gets its development-to-supply chain right now will be very difficult to displace later.