BREAKING UNTOLD FINANCIAL AND NON-FINANCIAL BARRIERS: INVESTIGATING PHARMACEUTICAL SMES’ CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES IN EUROPE

Pharmaceutical Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face significant challenges in Europe. Importantly, the majority of SMEs are continuously having a negative operating profit. However, there are limited studies on the root causes of business failure and how these SMEs can sustain themselves in the case of intense competition from global giants. The present study aims to find out the financial and non-financial challenges faced by pharma SMEs in Europe. A random stratified sampling method is applied to choose the pharma SMEs in Europe to prepare a checklist of the factors in the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) matrix, and the pairwise correlation aims to explore the strength of the asset and cost variables of the selected pharmaceutical SMEs during the period 2013 to 2024. Most companies have weaknesses, such as persistent financial performance failures; many are still in the early stages of clinical trials, with losses from clinical trial failures. Besides, the common threats include disruptions to ongoing research programs due to changes in the competitive and legislative environments, legal challenges related to tax credits, and repayment of government grant loans. Additionally, the common scenario from the pairwise correlation matrix illustrated an increase in operating costs due to rising research and development (R&D) and general and administrative (G&A) expenditures, causing a negative net profit. The research is distinctive because there has never been a study on the current issues faced by pharma SMEs in Europe. Since the firms consistently lose operating profit, prior studies have not addressed this problem. It is crucial to conduct further in-depth research to see how these contemporary problems can be overcome.