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Bausch Health sells branded and generic medicines, eye-care products, skin treatments, and medical devices to doctors and patients around the world.
Bausch Health is a drug company that sells prescription medicines, generic drugs, and medical devices, with a big focus on the eyes, the skin, and the gut. Its most famous piece is the contact-lens-and-eye-care business that made the Bausch & Lomb name a household word among eye doctors, and its gut drug Xifaxan is a major seller. Doctors prescribe these products, patients use them, and insurers and health systems pay for them.
The business is a collection of pieces rather than one clean machine. It sells branded medicines through its Bausch Health segment, generic drugs through its Bausch Health Americas and international arms, and eye-care products through Bausch + Lomb, which it spun off as its own public company in 2022. Bausch Health still owns most of Bausch + Lomb and depends on it heavily for value, even though the two are now separate listings. The company is headquartered in Laval, Canada, a suburb of Montreal, despite being listed in New York. The reason to know this company is its history. It used to be Valeant Pharmaceuticals, one of the most aggressive deal machines in the industry. Under CEO Michael Pearson, Valeant bought company after company, slashed research spending, and raised drug prices sharply, which made the stock a Wall Street darling for a while. Then in 2015 it all unraveled: questions about its relationship with a specialty pharmacy called Philidor, an accounting scandal, a huge debt load, and a stock collapse. The company renamed itself Bausch Health in 2018 and has spent years paying down debt and trying to rebuild trust. That debt is the heart of the story now. Bausch Health carries billions in borrowings from the Valeant days and has been working to refinance and shrink them. The company also faces the loss of patent protection on Xifaxan, which is a looming threat to its cash flow. Free cash is mostly going toward debt reduction rather than dividends or big buybacks, which tells you what management is worried about.
The pitch is simple: a set of steady, cash-generating medicines and eye products, plus a long climb out from under a very messy past. The risk is equally simple: a heavy debt pile, a patent cliff on its best drug, and a reputation that still remembers Valeant.
Saved answer 路 last researched 15 Nov 2026