Pharmaceutical company intelligence reports from Espicom provide a full review of the company's activities together with five-year sales forecasts for its key products. The company's financial performance is covered in-depth, from its latest results to a complete analysis of its latest full fiscal year and an outlook for the future. A section on company strategy covers mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, key agreements, products and R&D. An overview of key products and R&D is followed by a comprehensive review of the company's product portfolio and research and development pipeline by therapeutic area. In addition, supplementary appendices provide more in-depth information on financials, agreements and corporate events. Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (BI) is the world's largest private pharmaceutical enterprise, encompassing more than 137 affiliates worldwide, and employing around 38,400 people. The company's activities are concentrated on two businesses: Human Pharmaceuticals and Animal Health. BI is headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, where the company was founded in 1885.

Branded prescription medicines remain BI's most significant source of income. In 2006, this segment generated 78.6 per cent of total sales, principally driven by the success of Spiriva, Flomax and Micardis. Mobic sales have been impacted by generic competition, although the aforementioned products will continue to be the core growth drivers for this segment and are forecast to have sales well in excess of EUR 1 billion in 2011. However, patent expiries for Flomax and Sifrol, and increasing competition for Combivent and Viramune, will significantly impact on prescription pharmaceutical sales. Consequently, the pressure is on BI to rejuvenate its product profile, and in recent years, the company has made serious progress in this task.

The launches of Aptivus and Cymbalta may prove vital for the Virology and CNS therapeutic areas, both of which are currently threatened by falling sales of their major products in the short-to-medium term. Aptivus and Cymbalta have been in-licensed through agreements with Pfizer and Eli Lilly, respectively, and BI continues to actively seek similar deals with other companies. However, in order to generate the maximum value from its product portfolio, BI will have to increase the productivity of its own R&D activities. Currently, BI's pipeline is dominated by line extensions for its major products, with Rendix being the only promising late-stage candidate compound. In 2006, BI increased human pharma R&D expenditure by 15.9 per cent, and it now accounts for 14.4 per cent of total sales. Through this substantial investment, the company hopes to be able to broaden its research and achieve effective lifecycle management of its major products. To this end, in 2005, new pharmaceutical compounds entered the Metabolic and Oncology pipelines, a notable milestone, as previously neither therapeutic area contained any pipeline projects.