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. Headquartered in the UK, GlaxoSmithKline was formed in 2000 as a result of the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham.

It employs over 100,000 people in 116 countries with over 15,000 involved in research. GSK has a broad portfolio, with projects in the fields of respiratory, central nervous system, anti-infectives, metabolic disorders, oncology, cardiovascular and urogenital. In addition, GSK has an extensive vaccines portfolio. According to GSK, it supplied one quarter of the world's vaccines by the end of 2006 and had a further 20 in clinical development.

According to GSK, the key drivers of business performance are growth of existing products and the launch of new products. The group had 14 products with over £500 million in annual global sales in 2006 and the strong growth seen from key products such as Seretide/Advair and GSK's vaccines business is expected to continue in the short term. GSK has already seen the significant impact of generic competition on products such as Paxil IR and Wellbutrin SR, which were both adversely affected following the arrival of generics in the US in 2003 and 2004.

As GSK braces itself for intensifying generic drug competition it faces further disappointing sales from its pivotal diabetes treatment, Avandia. In addition, GSK has lost out to Merck & Co in the race to launch its cervical cancer vaccine, Cervarix. Merck has already won contracts across much of the EU for Gardasil, which it markets in Europe through a joint venture with sanofi-aventis. It has currently been approved in 85 countries, including the US. GSK however, only received European regulatory approval for Cervarix in September 2007 and expects approval in the US in the coming months. GSK may be convinced of the merits of Cervarix and has funded a head-to-head trial comparing the two vaccines, with preliminary results due to be published in summer 2008, but the delay in approval has given Merck a head start which may be difficult to counter.

In response to these problems, GSK is implementing a restructuring which is designed to cut costs by £350 million in 2008 and £700 million annually from 2010. This will include the closure of a numbert of factories and several thousand job cuts from the worldwide workforce. The company also intends to reduce the number of sales representatives. Sales and other administrative expenses are expected to decline to less than 30 per cent.