Evotec’s cost-cutting drive has reached its pipeline. The biotech has axed around 30% of its asset portfolio and offloaded clinical program EVT 201 as part of a broader, ongoing attempt to correct its course.
Germany-based Evotec has a pipeline of assets that it co-owns with companies including Bristol Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. In addition to its partnered assets, the company has programs that are yet to be paired off with a drug developer. The future of the programs has been in doubt since Evotec unveiled a multi-year plan to get its business back on track.
Having started the second stage of the plan late last year, Evotec disclosed changes to its portfolio and strategy in its fourth quarter results Thursday. Evotec framed its pipeline changes as an attempt to focus on high-quality, high-potential assets. Christian Wojczewski, CEO of Evotec, said on the earnings call that the company stopped projects “which did not anymore meet our high quality, high potential criteria.”
Evotec’s pipeline is still vast. The company has more than 100 assets but around 70% of them are already partnered “with top pharma companies,” Wojczewski said. Evotec has worked on more than 30 assets for BMS alone.
Six assets are in the clinic and another six are in preclinical development. Cord Dohrmann, chief scientific officer at Evotec, said on the earnings call that around 15 assets could reach the clinic over the next two years. The company plans to improve the quality of the pipeline over the next two to three years and make more selective bets on internal programs that could be the subject of deals in the future.
“We will continue to do very selective investments in early stage, highly differentiated assets on our own behalf. Those serve as valuable proof points of the effectiveness of our technology and they open the door for strategic collaborations,” Wojczewski said. “We will only advance those assets beyond early stage as part of a strategic partnership.”
The company said it has divested EVT 201. Evotec wrapped up phase 2 trials of the candidate, which is also called dimdazenil, in insomnia and daytime sleepiness in 2007. Zhejiang Jingxin Pharmaceutical won approval for the drug in China in 2023. Evotec disclosed the divestiture in the slide deck for its earnings call without providing further details.
Divesting EVT 201 ends Evotec’s foray into clinical development. Wojczewski said the company’s focus is now “sharply defined from target ID to IND” and confirmed “we will not be in clinical development.” The pipeline pullback could see Evotec’s R&D spending come in as low as 40 million euros this year, versus 51 million euros in 2024.
Evotec is also exiting the equity stakes it acquired in some partners, starting with the divestiture of its 70 million euro holding in Recursion Pharmaceuticals. “Our strategy is not to act as a VC player,” Wojczewski said.
The changes follow earlier decisions to lay off 400 people and exit the gene therapy space. Evotec shared an update on the earlier cuts on its earnings call, revealing that it closed its gene therapy site last year and completed the layoffs in the first quarter of 2025. The shuttering of the gene therapy facility was part of a wider wave of site closures.