Simple Arithmetic

It's something 'everybody knows': pharma spends more on sales & marketing than the piddling amounts of its revenue on research, and what it does spend is largely on tweeking existing product in order to maintain a patent (thus, pricing) position. Well, this bit doesn't fully support all of the 'knows', but it does go from commando to briefs.

Biotech's famed four horsemen -- $BIIB, $AMGN, $CELG, $GILD - spent $163B in cash over past 5 years. 68% or $87B went to stock buybacks, while $29B went to major M&A... from JPM analysts

It's also worth remembering that the $29B spend is zero-sum from a research point of view; some compound(s) have been robbed from Peter to benefit Paul. Could be less than zero if the purpose is to squelch a competitive compound. From the macro point of view, nothing good has happened.

There have been, at least annually, such remarks. But it's laborious to get the numbers, since one has to parse through myriad 10-K. These only looked at the Gorillas.