West Pharmaceutical Services at KeyBanc Forum: Strategic Growth Insights

On Wednesday, 18 March 2026, West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE:WST) presented at the 2026 KeyBanc Capital Markets Healthcare Forum, outlining both optimistic and cautious strategies for the coming year. The company emphasized its focus on high-value components and the GLP-1 market while addressing potential regulatory impacts and capacity expansions.

• Projected top-line growth of 5%-7%.

• Non-GLP-1 business to contribute significantly, with high single-digit to low double-digit growth.

• GLP-1 growth baselined at 10%, despite a 50% increase in 2025.

• Planned at $250-$275 million, down from $285 million in 2025.

• 40% for maintenance, 60% for growth initiatives.

• Expected to contribute 200 basis points to growth.

• Represents a 6 billion unit opportunity in Europe, with broader implications noted by the FDA.

• Additional labor and tech transfers planned for facilities in Germany and the U.S.

• Transitioning SmartDose business to AbbVie.

• Moving away from continuous glucose monitoring business.

• Expanding drug handling operations, projected to generate $20 million in 2026.

• High single-digit to low double-digit growth expected for non-GLP-1 high-value components.

• Biologics and biosimilars seen as key growth drivers.

• Anticipated growth in both auto-injectors and pens, driven by new patient uptake.

• Modest growth expected in generic GLP-1s in markets like China and Brazil.

• Minimum volume requirements in place, with expectations for higher fulfillment.

• Both expected to grow, with auto-injectors firmly established in the U.S.

• Early discussions with drug companies to plan for future demand.

For a more detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript of the conference call.

Paul Knight, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: Hi, this is Paul Knight, the analyst covering life science at KeyBanc Capital Markets. With me today is Anna Stopkowski, who’s on my team as well. We’ll be running some Q&A. Then we have, of course, Bob McMahon, the Chief Financial Officer of West Pharma.

Bob McMahon, Chief Financial Officer, West Pharma: Oopsie.

Paul Knight, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: John Sweeney, Head of Investor Relations. That kind of hops into my first question, Bob. You know, Agilent, of course, very, very well-known firm. I’ve followed it since the 1999 spin, I believe, from HP. What do you like about the West business now that you’ve been here a little bit?

Bob McMahon, Chief Financial Officer, West Pharma: Yeah, yeah, Paul. Great. Thanks to you and Anna for having us. We really appreciate it. What I’d say is, you know, the thing that’s really super exciting about West is I think it’s a business model that’s fairly rarely matched in the industry. And when I think about that, a business that’s got a very strong market share, 70%-75% kind of market share, with even more opportunities ahead of us as we move into kind of biologics where we have even a higher participation rate, and the durability of the business long term. When we think about the competitive moat that we have, once we’re specced into a product, we are on that product for the life of that product.

It’s very rare that we lose a molecule, whether that be a branded molecule or even a generic molecule. The nature of the long-term secular tailwinds behind us, the strong market position and the competitive moat that we have gets me super excited about this. As I look forward, those things are still there. I think we have an opportunity to continue to drive even better execution in the marketplace and even more margin expansion now that I’ve been here for six months. I’m really happy to be here with the West team.

Paul Knight, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: Anna, I’ll let you start with some questions.

Anna Stopkowski, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: Okay. Sounds good. Thank you, John, thank you, Bob, for both joining us today. We really appreciate it, and we look forward to this conversation. I thought maybe before we jump into 2026, we could just take a look back at what we’ve seen this year. I feel like we saw a bunch of dynamics, including vials starting to normalize, GLP-1s accelerating, but you also had a customer loss on the contract manufacturing side. Do you think you could just level set with investors where we sit today, and how you feel entering into 2026?

Bob McMahon, Chief Financial Officer, West Pharma: Yeah. You know, 2025 was a really, I think, really an important transitional year for the company. As you look through kind of where we started the year versus where we ended, we made a tremendous amount of progress. The second half of the year, we really started seeing the momentum on a number of different fronts come through, not only on GLP-1s, but on our core business going forward. We exit 2025 with, I think, some really good momentum. You know, at the beginning of 2025, we talked about a number of things that we wanted to get through. One is destocking on our High-Value Components business. We feel like we’ve gone through that.

We talked about rectifying the economics around our SmartDose product. We exited this year with the announcement that we made in January, a few months ago, of transitioning that business over to AbbVie, and I think that’s a win for them and a win for us. You know, we’re in the midst of transitioning our contract manufacturing, the CGM business, and really ramping up our drug handling business, which will actually have better economics going forward. On a number of different fronts, I think we made very good progress throughout 2025, and we exited 2025 with a lot of momentum, exceeding expectations. Actually, demand was greater than our supply on our non-GLP-1 business.

We sit here at the start of 2026 with, I think, a really solid momentum. I’m sure we’ll talk about 2026 and kinda how we think about it, but really pleased with the progress that we have. I think a lot of those things are behind us, and we’re really starting to see the business shine and what it’s capable of.

Paul Knight, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: Absolutely.

Anna Stopkowski, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: That’s really good insight on kind of what we’ve seen in 2025, and seems like most of those headwinds are behind us at this point. That brings us maybe to the 2026 guide. I think you guys are guiding to 5%-7% top line growth, but I think there are a couple conservative assumptions going into that guide. You mentioned the 50% GLP-1 growth in 2025. I think you’re guiding to 10% in 2026. Obviously there’s also the non-GLP-1 component we’ll get into, but could you just walk us through your framework for setting your guidance and visibility you have today?

Bob McMahon, Chief Financial Officer, West Pharma: Yeah. Thanks, Anna. You know, it’s the beginning of the year, so I’d characterize our guidance as a prudent start to year. That five to seven percent top line growth really there’s a couple of components and the majority of that growth is actually gonna be coming from our non-GLP-1 business. If we think of just the midpoint of that guidance as 6%, 5 of that points are actually coming from our HVP business, which will be over 50% of the total company. Call it high single digit, low double digit growth there. To your point, we’re baselining GLP-1 at 10% or 1 point of that growth. Now, that’s coming off a growth of 50%.

Quite honestly, we’d be disappointed if that’s all we did. That we have probably more bias to the upside, from that standpoint. We obviously also recognize there’s a number of variables that are coming into play there with things like oral GLP-1s, and I’m sure we’ll talk about those as well. We wanted to make sure that people understood kind of the underlying business is very healthy with the high single-digit, double-digit growth that’s really driving that. When we think about that 10% oral GLP-1 growth, that’s actually a much more aggressive impact of GLP-1 orals than what we’re expecting. We still believe that, you know, by the end of the decade, it’s roughly gonna be 30%.

Growing both injectables as well as orals, that 10% would indicate roughly 40%-50%. A more aggressive or conservative forecast from where we think the numbers are and where we’re planning. We think we’re well-positioned to come into the year with continued momentum and we’ll see how things play out, but we like where we’re starting.

Anna Stopkowski, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: Yeah, that makes total sense and I think a smart way to frame the GLP-1 outlook. You mentioned your non-GLP-1 business.

Bob McMahon, Chief Financial Officer, West Pharma: Yeah.

Anna Stopkowski, Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets: I think that saw strong demand in 2025. Could you walk us through some of the drivers behind. I think you’re guiding to high single-digit to low double-digit non-GLP-1 growth in 2026. I know you mentioned supply versus demand situation. Are you seeing more of that capacity ramp support that demand?

Bob McMahon, Chief Financial Officer, West Pharma: It’s probably a good way to kind of take a step back and look at kind of how that progressed throughout 2025 as we were talking about before. In Q1 of last year, that was down double digits. It was down slightly in Q2. Then the second half of the year, both Q3 and Q4, we were up mid-single digits. You saw that momentum throughout 2025 really show up in that non-GLP-1 business. We’re forecasting high single digit to low double digit growth going into 2026. The reason that is a number of things. One is actually we are actually seeing demand stronger than supply. We saw that in Q4.

We are building additional capacity, adding more labor into our plant in Germany, in Europe. We think that will benefit us in the first half of this year. Then you think about kinda the ongoing products that are coming on market with the biologics. We exited 2025 with greater than a 90% participation rate for the products that were being approved. The