The OxyContin maker's revenue is expected to drop below $1 billion this year for the first time in more than a decade, as employees leave and a potential bankruptcy filing looms
Purdue’s reliance on OxyContin for the bulk of revenue is the result of business decisions made by the Stamford, Conn.-based company. Photo: justin lane/Shutterstock By Jared S. Hopkins June 30, 2019 5:32 am ET OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP is struggling with slumping sales, a shrinking workforce and restructuring challenges as it battles lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, according to people familiar with the company.
Nearly 218,000 people died in the U.S. from overdoses related to prescription opioids between 1999 and 2017, according to federal data. Purdue and the Sacklers have broadly denied the allegations in the opioid cases and said they want to help solve the epidemic. The company has helped fund distribution of opioid overdose antidote naloxone, for example.
Late last year, Purdue got rid of its entire sales force. Its total employee count now sits at about 500. In 2015, there were nearly 1,700 employees, according to an internal training document from then viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Eight family members who served on the board are also personally named as defendants in several dozen of the lawsuits. The last Sackler left the board of directors earlier this year, but the family continues to own the company through trusts. Both branches of the family that control Purdue have said they are committed to reaching a global resolution of the lawsuits. Purdue and the Sacklers have previously denied the allegations in the lawsuits.
Purdue’s spokeswoman said that in 2015, “there was no indication of the scope and scale of civil litigation that the company is currently facing, and therefore there were no issues with profit distributions to shareholders.” Newsletter Sign-up The board’s decision to stop profit distributions, by the end of 2017, followed days of debate among Sacklers, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. The decision helped the company build its reserves and Purdue now has about $1.5 billion in cash, according to one of those people.
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