Bausch Health Companies Inc. is the Canadian drugmaker that spent the first half of the 2010s as Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Wall Street's favorite pharmaceutical story, and the second half dismantling what that story had built. Under chief executive J. Michael Pearson, a former McKinsey director who took the job on February 1, 2008, Valeant borrowed to buy companies that already sold medicines instead of funding its own discovery research. The merger with Canada's Biovail Corporation on September 28, 2010 moved the company to Canada; the purchases of Bausch + Lomb for $8.7 billion in 2013 and Salix Pharmaceuticals for about $11.1 billion in 2015 made it one of the largest listed companies in the country.
The price increases that ended the model
Valeant's practice was to buy a marketed drug, cut the costs around it and raise the price. The clearest example came in February 2015, when it bought the heart drugs Isuprel and Nitropress from Marathon Pharmaceuticals and raised their U.S. list prices by 525% and 212%. Members of the House Oversight Committee began demanding documents in August 2015, the Senate held hearings in December, and federal prosecutors in Massachusetts and New York opened inquiries into the company's pricing and patient assistance programs.
Philidor and the collapse
In October 2015 short sellers and journalists exposed Valeant's relationship with Philidor, a mail-order pharmacy that distributed its branded drugs and that Valeant had an option to buy, a relationship it had not disclosed clearly. The shares collapsed, the SEC opened an investigation in the fourth quarter of 2015, and the company was left servicing roughly $30 billion of debt. The case closed on July 31, 2020, when Bausch Health agreed to pay a $45 million civil penalty to settle SEC charges of improper revenue recognition and misleading disclosures on negligence-based charges, neither admitting nor denying the findings. Pearson paid a $250,000 penalty and reimbursed the company $450,000.
The Papa cleanup and the new name
The board hired Perrigo chief executive Joseph Papa in April 2016, and he took over in early May. He cut ties with Philidor and sold assets to make interest payments, including the CeraVe, AcneFree and AMBI skincare brands to L'Oreal for about $1.3 billion and the Dendreon cancer business to China's Sanpower Group for about $820 million in 2017. On July 13, 2018 the company completed its name change from Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. to Bausch Health Companies Inc., borrowing the identity of the eye-health business founded in Rochester, New York in 1853, and the shares began trading as BHC three days later.
What the company looks like now
Bausch Health reported FY2025 revenue of $10.266 billion, up 7%, with net income attributable to Bausch Health of $157 million, its first annual GAAP profit after six straight annual losses, and adjusted EBITDA of $3.54 billion. Half of that revenue, $5.101 billion, came from Bausch + Lomb, which was listed on the NYSE and TSX in May 2022 but remains about 88% owned and fully consolidated. Salix contributed $2.578 billion, International $1.132 billion, Diversified Products $937 million and Solta Medical $518 million. It employed about 20,300 people at the end of 2025 and sells roughly 1,000 products in about 90 countries.
Xifaxan, the 2028 cliff and the debt
The business still turns on one molecule. Xifaxan generated $2.212 billion in 2025, about 85% of Salix segment revenue and more than a fifth of company revenue, and Bausch Health expects U.S. generic competition in 2028 while litigating against Norwich, Amneal, Cipla and Ajanta. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also selected Xifaxan 550 mg in January 2025 for the second round of Medicare price negotiation, with negotiated prices applying from 2027. The planned replacement failed: in January 2026 the two Phase 3 RED-C trials of amorphous-rifaximin soluble solid dispersion missed their primary endpoints, and the company took a goodwill impairment of about $1.4 billion against the Salix unit in the first quarter of 2026. Debt was $20.232 billion of principal at the end of 2025, interest cost $1.604 billion for the year, and $9.6 billion was refinanced during 2025 to push maturities out. Completing the Bausch + Lomb separation, through a sale of the stake, a distribution to shareholders or both, is still tied to reaching targeted leverage ratios rather than to a date.
