> - Keep prices at "expected" levels that bake in high R&D. Instead just eat the profit.

I don't think it's so clear whether this part of the strategy actually makes money. After all, to get those drugs, somebody else had to do the R&D, then Valeant purchased the drugs. So at the very least, the cost of those purchases has to be subtracted from the "extra" profits. The cost of future company/drug purchases also has to be subtracted, to account for the fact that no new drugs are going to result from no R&D.

Don't they just end up paying for R&D at once during an acquisition instead of paying for ongoing R&D themselves? How is this supposed to make money for them?

I personally think it's less to do with R&D than with lazy analysts and accountants: they cut the R&D spending, but convince inattentive observers to apply the same valuation multiples that otherwise apply to pharmaceutical companies that do their own R&D, so the observers ignore the necessary future costs of acquiring R&D companies. The same logic would work for all their weird insurance shenanigans — they trick people into thinking those are the same "type" of revenues that they see at other companies.