March Healthcare M&A Madness

March isn’t quite over as we write this, and neither is the madness—which won’t stop us from posting the biggest deals of the month. As of Friday, March 27, $34.4 billion has been committed to finance about 105 transactions. Of course, $21 billion of that comes from the AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) acquisition of Pharmacyclics (NASDAQ: PCYC). Next week, preliminary Q1:15 results! Read More »

Year’s Biggest Billion-Dollar Deals Top $64 Billion

Already in 2015, we’ve recorded 11 billion-dollar-plus deals, for a total of $64.4 billion. Thanks to the $21 billion AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) bid for Pharmacyclics (NASDAQ: PCYC), the biotechnology sector accounted for $27.5 billion of those big deals. Pharmaceuticals, with four billion-plus transactions, still ranks first, with combined spending of $30.45 billion.  Read More »

AbbVie Wins Pharmacyclics

Everybody hates a winner, it seems. Last week’s announcement that AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV) won the bidding war for Pharmacyclics Inc. (NASDAQ: PCYC) had many analysts shaking their heads in disbelief. The consternation was over the price, which at $261.25 per share for PCYC came to approximately $21 billion, about 27.8x revenue and 165.6x EBITDA. The real prize for AbbVie is Imbruvica, an effective treatment against a form of leukemia and other diseases that Pharmacyclics is marketing under an agreement with Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ). J&J and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) were also in the final round of bidders. AbbVie’s shares fell nearly 6% on March 5, the day after the announcement,... Read More »