Last year, Bristol-Myers Squibb raised a few eyebrows when it made licensing deals with Pfizer and AstraZeneca on several drugs in its pipeline. Sure, Bristol got cash payments and partners to share the development costs, but the company was also foregoing a fat slice of future revenues on the drugs.

Of course, those revenues are purely theoretical until and unless the drugs win FDA approval. Fast forward to yesterday, when Bristol and Pfizer announced that apixaban — on which Bristol had partnered with Pfizer in a deal worth up to $1 billion in up-front and milestone payments — failed to meet its goal in a late-stage clinical trial.

Clearly, that’s not good news for either Bristol or Pfizer. But the failure does make Bristol’s decision to partner on the drugs look pretty smart.

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