Laborie has struck a $239 million deal to buy Cogentix Medical. The takeover will give Laborie control of devices for the treatment of overactive bladder (OAB) and stress urinary incontinence (SUI).
Cogentix has built its business around a urology portfolio spearheaded by a neuromodulation device to treat overactive bladder and a soft-tissue bulking agent for managing stress urinary incontinence. Double-digit urology growth last year took the unit’s annual sales up toward the $50 million mark, pushing Cogentix’s overall revenues beyond $56 million.
The revenue figure is well short of the three-year goal Cogentix set when it was created through the 2015 merger of Uroplasty and Vision-Sciences. But equally it is up on the period shortly after the merger when a combination of debt and competition from the far-larger Medtronic threatened Cogentix’s prospects. A subsequent investment by Accelmed and conversion of the debt into equity enabled Cogentix to invest in its sales team and fight back.
Accelmed has been rewarded with a big return on the stock it picked up when Cogentix was at a low ebb. The payday follows Laborie’s identification of Cogentix’s Urgent PC Neuromodulation System and Macroplastique as a good fit for its urology business.
“The acquisition of Cogentix advances our strategy to invest in leading technologies that provide product and channel scale to Laborie’s existing urology strategic business unit diagnostic and therapeutic portfolio, particularly in the areas of OAB and SUI,” Laborie CEO Michael Frazzette said in a statement.
When the deal closes, Cogentix’s products will slot into a business unit that already sells ultrasound bladder scanners, pelvic floor diagnostics and other urology devices. Laborie is paying a 14% premium over Cogentix’s closing price the day before the deal was disclosed to acquire the device manufacturer.
By Nick Paul Taylor
Source: Fierce Biotech
CureVac and the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced a co-development and licensing agreement to develop novel messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines. The strategic collaboration will focus on the development of differentiated cancer vaccine candidates in selected haematological and solid tumour indications with high unmet medical needs.
FUJIFILM Corporation is planning to invest $1.2 billion to expand the planned FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. This news follows the organisation’s announcement of a $2 billion investment in the facility in March 2021. This additional financial boost totals the investment to over $3.2 billion, FUJIFILM confirmed.
Sanofi’s global restructuring and downsizing is now fully underway, with layoffs stretching to the company’s Belgian offices. Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports that 67 employees have been laid off at a site in Ghent and 32 jobs are on the chopping block at Sanofi’s Belgium HQ in Diegem.
