Amid the sale process of Medley , its Brazilian generic drug unit, the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi projects a capital gain of approximately €500 million in 2026 from divestment initiatives worldwide.
This package includes the sale of the Brazilian company, acquired in 2009 from the Negrão family, which cost the French company R$ 1.5 billion. Seventeen years later, Sanofi realized that it no longer makes sense to continue the operation, as its focus has shifted to innovative medicines, which are more profitable, and to vaccine production.
This initiative is part of a broader effort by the company to sell its generic drug units worldwide. In 2018, for example, Sanofi completed the sale of Zentiva, its European division, to Advent International for €1.9 billion.
In 2023, Eurofarma paid Sanofi €299 million to acquire Genfar, the French company's generic drug arm in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The brand began to be used by the Brazilian company in Latin America, except for the Brazilian market.
The projected cash inflow from the sale of company assets this year is included in the 2025 financial report released on Thursday, January 29th, by Sanofi. In 2025, capital gains from divestments reached €419 million, meaning the company aims to profit 19% more from asset sales in 2026.
In its 2025 financial report, Sanofi reported net revenue of €43.6 billion, a 6.2% increase over the previous year. Operating profit was €12.14 billion, a 7.1% growth. The company also announced a share buyback plan, with investments of €1 billion.
Over the past 12 months, Sanofi's shares on the Paris Stock Exchange have depreciated by 24.3%. The French pharmaceutical company is valued at €94.5 billion.
Sales agenda
Although it generates cash, sales from operations are reflected in the company's revenue. According to the French pharmaceutical company, the impact on revenue from medicines that are part of the sold units reached €200 million in 2025, of which 30% occurred in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone.
In terms of sales volume, divestments in pharmaceuticals and portfolio rationalization had a negative impact, according to the company, of 0.7 percentage points on sales growth between October and December 2025. For the entire year, it was 0.5 percentage points.
In Brazil, Medley's revenue in 2025 reached R$ 1.4 billion, with an EBITDA of R$ 200 million. And it is this revenue that the French company will forgo starting this year, when it completes the sale of its local pharmaceutical company, one of the leading players in the generics sector in the Brazilian market.
As NeoFeed exclusively revealed in December, EMS and Aché advanced to the second phase of the bidding process to acquire Medley as favorites, with offers reaching approximately US$450 million, the highest since the beginning of the deal .
Besides EMS and Aché, Hypera, Biolab, the Indian company Sun Pharma, which operates under the generic drug brand Ranbaxy, and a fund from Vinci Compass are also in the final stages.
In the first phase, eight pharmaceutical companies participated in the bidding process, but several others did not have their proposals approved, such as Cimed and União Química.
While executives from companies interested in acquiring Medley are in talks with Sanofi executives, the candidates have begun a due diligence process to gain access to all of the company's figures, including financial and operational data. This phase began on February 12th.
In this new phase, the current owners of the Brazilian company are holding a new round of negotiations, giving the candidates the opportunity to improve their proposals in a kind of auction, without, however, one knowing, at least officially, the proposal of the other.
If EMS wins, the trend is for both brands to remain in the pharmaceutical market, since there is little overlap in medications. Another point in its favor is that Medley's factory in Campinas (SP) is only 20 kilometers from EMS's main manufacturing plant in Hortolândia (SP).
If Aché wins the bid, the expectation is that both operations will remain on pharmacy shelves. In the first nine months of 2025, the pharmaceutical company recorded revenue of R$ 4.2 billion, a 9.5% increase over the same period of the previous year.
