Allergan may have a reputation as a serial buyer, but it’s not looking for any big deals, CEO Brent Saunders insisted on Monday. And that assurance could quiet the rumors that the company is eyeing a Biogen buy.
As Saunders pointed out on Allergan’s Q2 conference call, the company has been focused on so-called “stepping stone” deals, and that’s what it’s looking at now.
Allergan’s recently canceled Pfizer megamerger notwithstanding, “It’s not like it’s a new strategy, despite our image … in the market,” he said.
That was a “once in a corporate lifetime situation,” Saunders insisted. These days, “we’re not looking for big M&A,” he said, though “while the odds of something compelling become clear are exceptionally low,” they’re “not zero,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, in the wake of Allergan’s just-closed deal to send its generics unit off to Teva–and another recent pact that’ll transfer its generics distribution business to the Israeli drugmaker, too–Teva’s base business “looks good,” Evercore ISI analyst Umer Raffat wrote in a note to clients. Key products Botox and Restasis netted $719.7 million and $390.6 million in quarterly sales, respectively, with their year-over-year growth offsetting a $38.2 million decline for now-off-patent Alzheimer’s med Namenda.
Overall, the heavy hitters led revenue to $3.68 billion–and while that figure fell short of the $4.08 billion consensus mark, that consensus hadn’t been updated for the generics distribution sale, Raffat pointed out. Allergan put up a net loss of $1.44 per share, which has widened since the company posted a loss of 80 cents in the year-ago period.
Allergan’s full-year guidance suffered on the distribution deal, too; while the business primarily supported the company’s former generics unit, branded revenues took a $100 million hit, leading the Dublin drugmaker to revise its sales guidance downward. It now expects between $14.75 billion and $15 billion for the year, as opposed to the $15 billion it previously forecast.
By Carly Helfan
Source: Fierce Pharma
A monkeypox outbreak is emerging in the U.S. and Europe, and at least one country is amping up countermeasure preparedness. Bavarian Nordic has secured a contract with an unnamed European country to supply its smallpox vaccine, called Imvanex in Europe, in response to the emergence of monkeypox cases, the Danish company said Thursday.
Moderna’s recent chief financial officer debacle—in which Jorge Gomez departed on his second day on the job—raised questions about the company’s hiring process given its rush to global biopharma prominence. The most obvious one: How was it possible for Gomez to be hired when he was under investigation by his previous employer, Dentsply Sirona of Charlotte, N.C.
Merck & Co. is plucking a cancer project from the branch of Chinese-based Kelun Pharmaceutical for up to $1.4 billion, but details from the New Jersey-based Big Pharma have been hard to come by. The deal, first disclosed Monday on the Shenzhen stock exchange, has Merck handing over $47 million in upfront cash in exchange for ex-China rights to a “macromolecular tumor project.”
