Alk­er­mes CEO Richard Pops is mak­ing nice with the ac­tivists at El­liott Ad­vi­sors spurring the com­pa­ny to slim down and get in bet­ter fi­nan­cial shape. And he’s adding two new in­de­pen­dent board mem­bers to keep close watch on their progress.

In a state­ment out Thurs­day morn­ing, the com­pa­ny out­lined a com­mit­ment to push its net in­come to 30% by 2024, with plans to push its top pipeline pro­grams in­to the mar­ket while look­ing to auc­tion off “non-core as­sets.”

And it all comes as rest­less in­vestors press Pops for bet­ter num­bers. The stock $ALKS popped 9% this morn­ing, but shares have melt­ed away in the past 3 years, with the mar­ket cap dwin­dling to less than $3 bil­lion.

The re­lease notes:

These ini­tia­tives al­so fol­low con­struc­tive di­a­logue with the com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ers, in­clud­ing funds ad­vised by El­liott Ad­vi­sors (UK) Lim­it­ed (“El­liott”), and en­try in­to an as­so­ci­at­ed co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment be­tween Alk­er­mes and af­fil­i­ates of El­liott.

Alk­er­mes has ex­pe­ri­enced a se­ries of set­backs, most re­cent­ly a few weeks ago when their fail­ure to pass muster dur­ing an FDA in­spec­tion led to a CRL for their top prospect, the an­ti-psy­chot­ic com­bo drug ALKS-3831. The com­pa­ny shook up its com­mer­cial group last month, re­duc­ing plans for new hires as they look to the de­layed launch of ‘3831. And there’s a hunt un­der­way for new “ef­fi­cien­cies” that can be ex­e­cut­ed.

The ac­tivists at El­liott, last seen press­ing for changes at a strug­gling Alex­ion, gave Pops a thumbs up.

El­liott is high­ly sup­port­ive of the ini­tia­tives an­nounced to­day and com­mends the Board and man­age­ment of Alk­er­mes on tak­ing these steps. From our di­a­logue with man­age­ment we are con­fi­dent that the Com­pa­ny is com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing share­hold­er val­ue. Fur­ther, both David Daglio and Bri­an McK­eon will add sig­nif­i­cant val­ue to Alk­er­mes’ Board and the new­ly formed board com­mit­tee. Alk­er­mes is sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der­val­ued giv­en its at­trac­tive as­sets and growth po­ten­tial, and we are con­fi­dent that these new ini­tia­tives will yield mean­ing­ful share price up­side. We thank Richard and the rest of the team for their con­struc­tive di­a­logue and look for­ward to an on­go­ing en­gage­ment with the Com­pa­ny.

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

S&P Global has taken a look at the dominant forces shaping the pharma market and come to the conclusion that there will be more downgrades than upgrades in 2021 — the 8th straight year of steady decline.

But it’s not all bad news. Some things are looking up, and there’s still plenty of money to be made in an industry that enjoys a 30% to 40% profit margin, once you factor in steep R&D expenses.

In the search for a better Covid-19 therapeutic, GlaxoSmithKline and Vir have partnered up on two antibodies they hope have a chance. GSK is also testing its own in-house antibody, and early results may have shut the door on its widespread use.

A combination of GSK’s monoclonal antibody otilimab plus standard of care couldn’t best standard of care alone in preventing death and respiratory failure in hospitalized Covid-19 patients after 28 days, according to data from the Phase IIa OSCAR study unveiled Thursday.