Roche Builds on its Foundation Medicine Deal

Roche Builds on its Foundation Medicine Deal

Three years after its first investment, Roche AG (SIX: RO) bought the rest of Foundation Medicine, Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based molecular information company. In January 2015, Roche plunked down $1.03 billion to acquire approximately 57% of Foundation Medicine from its venture capital backers Google Ventures, Third Rock Ventures and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Roche acquired approximately 15.6 million shares in Foundation at $50 per share. It also invested $250 million by acquiring 5 million newly issued shares at $50 per share. My, how times (and markets) have changed. On June 19, Roche announced it would pay $2.4 billion to buy the shares it didn’t own. The... Read More »
Eli Lilly Doubles Down on Immuno-Oncology

Eli Lilly Doubles Down on Immuno-Oncology

ARMO BioSciences (NASDAQ: ARMO) is a late-stage immuno-oncology company that develops a pipeline of novel, proprietary product candidates designed to activate the immune system of cancer patients to recognize and eradicate tumors. On a trailing 12-month basis, it generated a net loss of $42.4 million. Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) overlooked the loss as it eyed the real prize–the addition of pegilodecakin, a PEGylated IL-10, which has demonstrated clinical benefits as a single agent, and in combination with both chemotherapy and checkpoint inhibitor therapy, across several tumor types. Pegilodecakin is currently being studied in a Phase 3 clinical trial in pancreatic cancer, and... Read More »

Takeda Takes on Shire for $81.5 Billion

Big Pharma deals are back, more than ever. After six weeks of offers, refusals, talks and more, Japanese drug giant Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (OTCQB: TKPYY) reached an agreement to acquire Shire plc (NASDAQ: SHPG) for $81.5 billion, including assumed debt of $19.54 billion. It’s the largest healthcare deal announced ever, unless you count Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) hostile stalking of AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) through much of 2014, with bids reported to be around $118 billion. And we don’t. Looking back over past pharmaceutical deals (that closed), this takes the record from Pfizer, which announced its acquisition of Wyeth, Inc. for approximately $78.5 billion, including $10.5 billion... Read More »
Takeda Takes Aim at Shire

Takeda Takes Aim at Shire

Big Pharma deals are making a comeback. Or so it seems from the speculation around Shire plc (NASDAQ: SHPG). Japanese drug maker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. (OTCQB: TKPYY) has been buzzing around the UK-based Shire for nearly a month, making bid after bid. It seemed to begin on April 16, when Shire sold its oncology business to the French drug maker Servier, for $2.4 billion in cash. In 2017, the 0ncology business generated revenues of $262 million. The total consideration represents a revenue multiple of 9.2x 2017 revenues. The acquisition gives Servier a direct commercial presence in the United States and boosts its presence in cancer. Servier’s products will be commercialized in the... Read More »
Takeda Takes Aim at Shire

Tax Overhaul Boosted Pharma Deals in Q4:17

The dam broke in the fourth quarter of 2017, and pharmaceutical deal makers began acquiring again. The Republican tax overhaul that lowered the tax rate for corporations’ repatriated cash was approved in December, spurring big drug companies to think about mergers and acquisitions once again. Deal volume in the fourth quarter shot up 100% over the previous quarter, to 34 transactions. Q4:17 basically equaled the same quarter in 2016, when 33 deals were announced. This quarter’s deal volume accounts for 35% of the 96 deals announced in the previous 12 months. Source: HealthCareMandA.com, January 2018 Twenty of the 34 announced transactions disclosed a price, making for a total of $6.9... Read More »

2017 Biggest Healthcare Deals by Sector

2017 was another big year for billion-dollar healthcare transactions. Among the deals that disclosed prices, 44 topped the billion-dollar mark, for a total of approximately $263.1 billion. Although that number seems high, there were 50 billion-dollar deals announced in 2015, although those totaled a slightly lower $240.1 billion. 2016 posted lower totals for both the number of billion-dollar deals (39) and combined prices ($194.1 billion). Of course the biggest healthcare deal in 2017 was the $77 billion acquisition of Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) by CVS Health (NYSE: CVS). But there were many more sizable transactions across the sectors, as the chart below illustrates. See how many you remember... Read More »