U.S.-based Mylan will pay $750 million in cash to buy women’s healthcare businesses from India’s Famy Care, vaulting to first place in emerging markets contraceptive sales.
With the deal, Mylan gets Famy’s range of women’s health products, including oral and injectable contraceptives, intrauterine devices (IUDs), tubal rings and hormone-replacement therapies. Four Indian manufacturing plants and 900 employees will also move to Mylan’s roster.
The two companies have partnered in North America, Europe and Australia since 2008. “With today’s acquisition, we are building on this successful partnership and further accelerating our global growth in this important therapeutic area,” Mylan CEO Heather Bresch said in a statement. Mylan expects to close the deal during the second half of 2015.
Famy is eligible for an additional $50 million if its products hit a series of development and regulatory milestones.
“Strategically, we believe this is a very reasonable field for Mylan to be in. An area of moderate clinical improvement, [with] overlap between brand and generics and increasing importance in emerging markets. … Financially, it is difficult to assess. Mylan did not discuss the financial impact of the transaction,” Bernstein analyst Ronny Gal said in a note to investors.
Mylan isn’t the only company charting growth in women’s health. For instance, Abbott Laboratories ($ABT) bought the Russian generics maker VeroPharm in June, getting its hands on women’s health meds and three manufacturing facilities in the country. Earlier this month, Actavis ($ACT) CEO Brent Saunders said he’s looking to expand in women’s health.
Meanwhile, Mylan has been intent on growing its business in fast-growing emerging markets, with a series of buyouts and licensing deals. Mylan scooped up India’s Agila Specialties, the injectables unit of Strides Arcolab, for $1.6 billion in 2013. Since then, Mylan signed up with Gilead Sciences ($GILD) to produce and sell low-cost copies of its treatments for HIV, hepatitis B, and most recently, hepatitis C. Just last week, Mylan said it would be among a group of Indian generics makers to sell one of Gilead’s experimental hepatitis C meds, alone and in combination with Gilead’s blockbuster Sovaldi.
Mylan is also forging ahead with a big expansion in developed markets outside the U.S. The company agreed last year to buy Abbott’s generics businesses in those countries, in a tax inversion deal that will put Mylan’s nominal headquarters in the Netherlands. The Abbott buy includes a range of women’s health products.
By Emily Wasserman and EJ Lane
