Few European pharmaceutical companies have undergone a transformation as striking as STADA's. From its roots as a German generics business, the group has evolved into a diversified healthcare player with growing strength across Generics, Consumer Healthcare, and Specialty Pharmaceuticals, underpinned by an entrepreneurial culture and an increasingly important presence across Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Christos Gallis, Executive Vice President for Eastern Europe, reflects on the mindset behind that evolution, the realities of operating in one of Europe's most diverse regions, and the policy choices that will shape the continent's future competitiveness and healthcare resilience.
Can you briefly introduce your background and tell us about your journey to STADA? Having joined during a period of significant growth, what has impressed you most about the company’s transformation?
I joined STADA in early 2019 and since July 2023 have served as Executive Vice President for Eastern Europe, overseeing our business across Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, which today spans 30 markets. Before that, I held leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson and spent ten years at Sandoz, then the generics and biosimilars division of Novartis. That experience gave me exposure to both consumer healthcare and pharmaceuticals, as well as a deep understanding of this diverse part of the world. STADA’s transformation, however, began before I arrived. In 2017, under the ownership of Bain Capital and Cinven, a new CEO and leadership team introduced a clear growth agenda and laid the foundations for the STADA we know today. What has been remarkable is not only the pace of growth since then, but also the mindset that accompanies it. Despite everything we have achieved, we genuinely believe we are still only at the beginning of this journey.
A few factors have been fundamental to that success. First, we made our ambition explicit. Our vision is clear: we want to outgrow the competition year after year. Every company aspires to grow, but for us this became a shared commitment across the organisation from the outset. Second, we adopted a simple but powerful strategy built around three pillars: Generics, Consumer Healthcare, and Specialty Pharmaceuticals. Rather than moving away from our heritage, we expanded upon it, with generics remaining the backbone of the business while Consumer Healthcare and Specialty provide additional avenues for growth and resilience. Finally, culture has played a decisive role. Ours is a growth culture underpinned by four values: collaboration, integrity, agility, and entrepreneurship. Collaboration is reflected in our “One STADA” philosophy and in the belief that we achieve more when we work as one team. These values are not abstract principles; they shape how we operate every day.
The results speak for themselves. Since 2017, STADA has delivered compound annual net sales growth of around nine percent while more than doubling EBITDA, with revenues increasing from just over EUR 2 billion in 2018 to a record EUR 4.3 billion in 2025. Yet what perhaps defines STADA most is that this progress has not led to complacency. If anything, it has reinforced our conviction that there is still significant opportunity ahead and that the next chapter of our growth story is only just beginning.
How conducive is the European market to executing STADA’s three-pillar strategy, and what differentiates your approach across Central and Eastern Europe?
Europe is both attractive and challenging at the same time. It is a market of close to half a billion people, with ageing populations, a growing burden of chronic disease, and high levels of healthcare spending, so it is clearly a market that companies cannot afford to ignore. It also offers advantages through centralised regulatory pathways and the possibility of launching products across multiple countries simultaneously. At the same time, however, Europe is not a true single market. Procurement systems, pricing and reimbursement frameworks vary significantly from one country to another, which means that success here depends as much on execution as it does on strategy.
That reality has shaped the way we operate. Rather than relying on a heavily centralised European structure, we remain lean and give a large degree of initiative to our local organisations, which I believe differentiates us from many others. Across Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, we have direct operations in most of our 30 markets, spanning countries from Poland and the Baltic States to the West Balkans and several Eurasian markets. In a handful of countries, such as Turkmenistan and Mongolia, we serve the market through our commercial network rather than our own legal entity. As other companies reconsider or reduce their presence, we have continued to invest and strengthen our footprint, which has increasingly positioned STADA as a partner of choice for organisations looking to access these markets. Partnerships with companies such as Opella, Church & Dwight and Viatris are a reflection of that capability and of the value that a strong local infrastructure can provide.
Europe also presents structural challenges, particularly for the off-patent sector. Prices continue to come under pressure through international reference pricing systems while costs are rising, and the regulatory burden has grown considerably over time. More challenging still is the fact that policies do not always move in the same direction, creating an environment that can at times feel contradictory. The opportunity in Europe remains significant, but navigating it successfully requires local expertise, flexibility and a business model that is capable of adapting to very different market realities.
How does Specialty Pharmaceuticals fit within STADA’s portfolio mix, and how do you maintain the balance between growth and resilience across the portfolio?
Specialty Pharmaceuticals has become an increasingly important growth platform for STADA. Back in 2017 and 2018, it was still very new to us, with only one or two molecules in the portfolio. Today, we have built one of Europe’s broadest biosimilars portfolios, spanning areas such as oncology, ophthalmology, nephrology, immunology, bone health, and anaemia, while also expanding into innovative therapies for conditions including Parkinson’s disease and rare kidney disease. It has become a much more diversified platform than it was only a few years ago. Even so, I would say we are still at the beginning. Specialty now accounts for over 23 percent of our revenues and surpassed EUR 1 billion in sales for the first time in 2025, giving us roughly a 40-40-20 split across Generics, Consumer Healthcare, and Specialty Pharmaceuticals. We see significant scope to expand access to these therapies across Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, where biologic treatments have often been less accessible. Recent launches such as Uzpruvo, our ustekinumab biosimilar, together with upcoming launches including denosumab, are part of that effort. This is positive for STADA, but even more importantly, it is positive for patients.
Delivering those launches successfully requires discipline as much as ambition. I often say that progress comes when you move from heroics to processes and practices. While our local organisations retain ownership of execution, we have clear frameworks and standards that guide every launch across the business. Launch performance forms part of the objectives of our general managers, making it a shared priority throughout the organisation. This combination of local accountability and structured execution has been an important factor in our ability to bring new products to market consistently across a diverse region.
However, diversification has never meant moving away from our roots. Generics remain the backbone of European healthcare systems and continue to be central to STADA’s strategy. In fact, our Generics business is still growing. Consumer Healthcare plays a complementary role by giving people more freedom to manage minor health concerns, prevention, and wellbeing themselves. The strength of the three-pillar model lies in the balance it creates. No single brand accounts for more than four percent of our global sales, which makes us less dependent on any one product or market and gives the business resilience. It also creates opportunities to share capabilities across the organisation, whether in market access, pharmacy relationships, or commercial execution, not only within countries but across markets as well. Together, these three pillars provide a balanced platform for sustainable growth while broadening access to healthcare across the communities we serve.
What role does Central and Eastern Europe play within STADA’s broader European business, and what are the unique dynamics of operating across the region?
While Western Europe remains the larger business overall, Central and Eastern Europe has been one of STADA’s growth engines, consistently outperforming both the market and our own expectations over the past six to seven years. Our region extends beyond traditional CEE to include Eurasia, spanning 30 markets and accounting for almost half of STADA’s workforce and manufacturing footprint. Importantly, this is a business built largely through our own affiliates and legal entities rather than third parties. I believe this performance reflects the consistent execution of our three-pillar strategy, our decision to continue investing in markets where others have scaled back, particularly across Eurasia and the Balkans, and a culture characterised by growth and entrepreneurship.
At the same time, this is an incredibly diverse region. Healthcare spending is generally lower than in Western Europe, leading to tighter budgets, greater pricing pressure, and more intense competition. Regulatory frameworks also differ significantly. Clawback systems in countries such as Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece are all designed differently and can either discourage growth or, as in Greece, encourage local investment through offsets linked to manufacturing, research and development, and clinical trials.
Those differences shape market dynamics in very practical ways. In countries such as Poland, where the use of originator biologics has historically been lower, biosimilar companies are often building markets rather than simply converting them. Even neighbouring markets can operate very differently, as illustrated by the contrast between Uzbekistan’s more flexible registration pathways and Kazakhstan’s longer Eurasian Economic Union processes. Success across this region therefore depends on strong local capabilities, deep market understanding, and the ability to adapt to very different realities from one country to the next.
How has STADA preserved its entrepreneurial culture through a period of rapid growth, and what can we expect from the next chapter of its development?
One of the reasons we have been able to maintain our entrepreneurial spirit is that we are not managed in an overly centralised way. Our country organisations have real ownership of the business, which means they share both the credit and the responsibility for the results they deliver. They run their markets with a high degree of autonomy and full ownership of their profit and loss accounts, while remaining aligned around common priorities. I often describe STADA as a “giant startup”. Despite our scale, we still want to preserve the belief that almost anything is possible, encouraging initiative and agility rather than allowing processes to define how we operate.
Looking ahead, I do not expect any major change in direction. Our new majority shareholder, CapVest, shares our growth ambition and brings a continuity agenda, building on what is already working rather than reinventing the business. The three-pillar strategy remains in place, our values remain unchanged, and the fundamentals that have underpinned our success are as relevant as ever. We may expand into additional channels or strengthen our presence in certain markets, but the focus will remain on executing simple but powerful strategies with discipline and consistency. We have achieved a great deal, but we genuinely believe we are still only at the beginning of this journey.
What message would you like to share with policymakers, investors, and the wider public about Europe’s place in the global healthcare landscape today?
I think one has to approach this discussion with a degree of humility, but if I had one message for policymakers, it would be to zoom out and ask whether the different policies being introduced across Europe are truly pulling in the same direction. Too often, they are not. A good example is the contrast between the Critical Medicines Act, which aims to strengthen Europe’s supply security and encourage pharmaceutical production, and the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, which places significant additional obligations on pharmaceutical manufacturers. From our perspective, one policy is trying to make Europe a more attractive place to invest and produce, while another risks undermining that objective. More broadly, I believe Europe needs greater coherence and predictability in its regulatory framework, as well as a stronger focus on incentives rather than taxes. Nobody likes taxes, whereas incentives encourage investment and drive behaviour. The Greek approach to clawbacks, where companies can offset part of their obligations through investments in manufacturing, research and development, and clinical trials, is a good example of how policy can support growth rather than constrain it.
For investors, I believe STADA is well positioned for the next phase of growth. As for Europeans more broadly, I sometimes feel we are too quick to focus on what is not working and become unnecessarily gloomy. There is a great deal to be proud of. Europe debates, challenges, and scrutinises policies before implementing them, and while that process can occasionally appear cumbersome, it often results in more robust and predictable outcomes. We are not part of a system where the rules change overnight. Europe continues to offer stability, strong institutions, and a long-term perspective, and I believe we should have confidence in those strengths and in Europe’s ability to remain competitive and continue shaping the future of healthcare.
