Rare disease drugs: Amgen buys Horizon Therapeutics
It is the largest merger in the healthcare sector of the year: the US Amgen will pay 27.8 billion dollars for the acquisition of the Irish Horizon Therapeutics specialized in the fight against rare diseases. Facts, numbers and predictions
The US biotechnology company Amgen, which in 2020 had been among the few Big Pharmas to back Donald Trump against Joe Biden in the presidential elections, has announced that it will acquire Horizon Therapeutics, an Irish biopharmaceutical company, whose main interest lies in the research, development and in the marketing of drugs for rare diseases.
According to the Wall Street Journal , it is not only the largest merger and acquisition deal by Amgen but also the "largest healthcare merger of the year".
HOW MUCH AMGEN WILL PAY
Amgen announced yesterday that it will buy Horizon for $27.8 billion, its largest deal ever, following its acquisition of ChemoCentryx earlier this year for $3.7 billion .
The company, Reuters reports, will pay $116.50 in cash for each Horizon share — a nearly 20% premium over the stock's last close. Amgen, the news agency continues, intends to finance the operation through debt and liquidity and has entered into a credit agreement of 28.5 billion dollars with Citibank and Bank of America.
When the news of the acquisition became official, the shares of Horizon, which is listed on the Nasdaq , jumped by about 15%.
WHAT'S BEHIND
According to Finimize , there is no surprise in the move by the pharmaceutical giant, due both to stiff competition and the imminent patent expiration that are affecting some of its flagship products such as Prolia and Xgeva for osteoporosis, Enbrel for l arthritis, and Otezla for psoriasis.
The two osteoporosis drugs alone, the WSJ reports, accounted for nearly $5.3 billion of Amgen's $26 billion in revenue last year.
Enbrel's sales, writes Reuters , plunged by 14% in the last quarter, reaching 1.1 billion dollars.
WHAT AMGEN GAINS
The acquisition will therefore help Amgen enrich and renew its portfolio with a number of popular and approved drugs such as, for example, the thyroid eye disease treatment Tepezza and the gout treatment Krystexxa.
Tepezza, Horizon's best-selling drug, Reuters reads, "saw sales double to $1.66 billion in 2021 from a year earlier," and analysts, according to data from Refinitiv, expect sales " reach $3.85 billion in 2028, while Enbrel's is expected to fall to $1.89 billion over the same period.
Krystexxa, on the other hand, had sales of $565.5 million last year and is expected to reach $1.36 billion by 2028.
According to Jefferies analysts, cited by the WJS , the acquisition of Horizon could add about 4 billion in new revenues for Amgen by 2024.
THE CRISIS IN THE BIOTECHNOLOGY SECTOR AND ANALYSTS' FORECASTS
But this strategy, explains Finimize , fits into a larger picture that involves many pharmaceutical companies. As the biotech sector suffered its biggest slump since the early 2000s this year (Shares of Horizon fell 27% in early 2022), analysts predicted that the wealthiest companies would "hoard up rivals to flesh out their product pipelines.” And so it went.
EVEN THE OTHER BIG PHARMA DO SHOPPING
In confirmation of this we recall, among other things, the acquisition of Abiomed by Johnson & Johnson for 16.6 billion dollars and the purchase of Imago BioSciences for 1.35 billion dollars by Merck.
Pfizer also gave itself a few gifts including Global Blood Therapeutics for $5.4 billion and Biohaven Pharmaceuticals for $11.6 billion.
Before the agreement with Amgen, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson had also come forward for Horizon.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/farmaci-malattie-rare-amgen-acquista-horizon-therapeutics/ on Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:07:47 +0000.