There will come a time when Cyrus and the BOD deci
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Posted On: 05/01/2023 5:06:15 PM
There will come a time when Cyrus and the BOD decide to shop CYDY around to Big Pharmas. There was an interesting article today about Merck's purchase of Prometheus for $10.5B. I inserted some excerpts below. The bidding should be quite competitive. It is exciting to daydream about this during our quiet periods.
In the week after this year’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Prometheus Biosciences CEO Mark McKenna got a phone call that would change the biotech’s future.
Sunil Patel, Merck’s head of business development and licensing, rang up McKenna on Jan. 19, just a week after McKenna had chatted with execs from Merck, along with five other mid- to large-cap pharma companies at JPM in San Francisco.
While all six companies had said they were interested in making a potential deal with Prometheus, none had made any offers.
That would change quickly over the next few months, with Merck CEO Rob Davis delivering an initial offer of $150 per share and AbbVie bidding $167.50 per share, culminating in Merck’s winning $10.8 billion offer just a few months later.
This year has already brought a buffet of high-profile M&A deals, as pharma giants are on the hunt for the next generation of blockbuster drugs, while many biotechs struggle with a prolonged market downturn. The largest deals of the year include Pfizer agreeing to acquire Seagen for $43 billion, Merck-Prometheus, and Astellas buying Iveric Bio for $5.9 billion, which was announced Sunday.
The inside look at Prometheus’ deal shows no lack of options for sellers with desirable assets, as Prometheus even shut down earlier partnership talks in December 2022 after it announced Phase II study successes and raised $500 million in a secondary offering. Before that, dealmakers at Goldman Sachs had reached out to 17 partners on behalf of Prometheus, with 16 of those contacted companies expressing interest in exploring a partnership.
After JPM and Patel’s call, Merck started performing due diligence on Prometheus, leading to another call between the two on Feb. 9 expressing “significant interest in a potential strategic transaction.” On March 31, Davis and Patel called McKenna to offer $150 per share, with Prometheus then trading around $110.
After consulting with the board, Prometheus’ leaders and its deal advisors informed three other drugmakers about the offer to gauge their interest in bidding. Two of those pharmas — AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, according to a Bloomberg report — said they were interested. On April 12, Party W, which Bloomberg reported as AbbVie, offered $167.50 per share.
Merck responded the next day by discussing a $200 per-share offer and a desire for exclusivity to move forward. Prometheus’ board ultimately concluded that Party W, or AbbVie, had “significantly increased antitrust risk associated with a transaction,” which helped finalize the deal with Merck at $200, valuing Prometheus at $10.8 billion.
(Note: the 52-week range for Prometheus is $21.50 - $197.83.)
https://endpts.com/who-tried-to-buy-prometheu...erck-deal/
In the week after this year’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Prometheus Biosciences CEO Mark McKenna got a phone call that would change the biotech’s future.
Sunil Patel, Merck’s head of business development and licensing, rang up McKenna on Jan. 19, just a week after McKenna had chatted with execs from Merck, along with five other mid- to large-cap pharma companies at JPM in San Francisco.
While all six companies had said they were interested in making a potential deal with Prometheus, none had made any offers.
That would change quickly over the next few months, with Merck CEO Rob Davis delivering an initial offer of $150 per share and AbbVie bidding $167.50 per share, culminating in Merck’s winning $10.8 billion offer just a few months later.
This year has already brought a buffet of high-profile M&A deals, as pharma giants are on the hunt for the next generation of blockbuster drugs, while many biotechs struggle with a prolonged market downturn. The largest deals of the year include Pfizer agreeing to acquire Seagen for $43 billion, Merck-Prometheus, and Astellas buying Iveric Bio for $5.9 billion, which was announced Sunday.
The inside look at Prometheus’ deal shows no lack of options for sellers with desirable assets, as Prometheus even shut down earlier partnership talks in December 2022 after it announced Phase II study successes and raised $500 million in a secondary offering. Before that, dealmakers at Goldman Sachs had reached out to 17 partners on behalf of Prometheus, with 16 of those contacted companies expressing interest in exploring a partnership.
After JPM and Patel’s call, Merck started performing due diligence on Prometheus, leading to another call between the two on Feb. 9 expressing “significant interest in a potential strategic transaction.” On March 31, Davis and Patel called McKenna to offer $150 per share, with Prometheus then trading around $110.
After consulting with the board, Prometheus’ leaders and its deal advisors informed three other drugmakers about the offer to gauge their interest in bidding. Two of those pharmas — AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, according to a Bloomberg report — said they were interested. On April 12, Party W, which Bloomberg reported as AbbVie, offered $167.50 per share.
Merck responded the next day by discussing a $200 per-share offer and a desire for exclusivity to move forward. Prometheus’ board ultimately concluded that Party W, or AbbVie, had “significantly increased antitrust risk associated with a transaction,” which helped finalize the deal with Merck at $200, valuing Prometheus at $10.8 billion.
(Note: the 52-week range for Prometheus is $21.50 - $197.83.)
https://endpts.com/who-tried-to-buy-prometheu...erck-deal/
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