This was posted on another site by onesurfed, Post #:
61330447 may have some relevance here?
(Barron's) from a few days ago:
"Late in 2021, Barron’s predicted a wave of biotech M&A this year that would lift the sector. Citing the “tons of dry powder” in the vaults of Pfizer (ticker: PFE), Novartis (NVS), and others, we argued that a wave of M&A would “reawaken investor interest in biotech.”
J&J Stock Slips as Use of Covid Vaccine Restricted Over Rare Blood ClotsThat wave hasn’t even been a ripple.
There have been some deals, to be sure: GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) $1.9 billion takeover of Sierra OncologySRRA –0.07% (SRRA) last month, and PfizerPFE +1.75% ’s deal, worth up to $525 million, to buy a private firm called ReViral.There have been signs, too, that the big pharma firms are on the hunt, including Pfizer’s selection of a veteran of one of the biggest healthcare deals in history as its new CFO. Still, the steady flow of biotech acquisitions that Barron’s and others expected has not materialized.
At the same time, biotech valuations continue to slide. The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF(XBI), which tracks the biotech sector, is down 34% this year, and 41.2% over the past 12 months.So if biotechs are cheap, and pharma firms have a lot of cash, why isn’t anyone making deals?
Merck (MRK) CFO Caroline Litchfield offered a compelling explanation in an interview with Barron’s in late April: Biotech executives don’t yet believe what Mr. Market is telling them about how much their companies are worth.“We’ve yet to see the seller change their mind-set on what the value of their company is,” Litchfield said. “I think the world lives in hope right? …And if you’re sitting in the biotech, you’re waiting to understand, is this permanent, or is it temporary? And that’s where I think they are.
”In his Friday note, Yee wrote that if and when large biopharma firms start buying small and mid-cap biotechs, it will signal that “sellers have adjusted their expectations and have accepted the new valuation.”What’s more, Yee wrote, it would show that the pharma buyers don’t think that the price will be falling any farther.
Taken together, that sense of stabilization could give investors the reassurance they need to come back into biotech, and keep buying.
That’s not happening yet. The XBI fell 17.9% in April. So far in May, it’s down another 3.2%. In an email to investors Friday morning, OppenheimerOPY +0.51% healthcare equity strategist Jared Holz summed up the mood. “So much self-fixing must be done here to improve the health of the broader Biotech space,” Holz wrote. “And we believe this will take time. Months. Perhaps years.”
Today in U.S. (that's 4 days later), we have $11.6 billion USD for something to alleviate migraines? They must be those fatal migraines...
"The long wait for a big-time biotech acquisition in 2022 seems to be over.Pfizer PFE +1.75% (ticker: PFE) announced Tuesday a deal to acquire Biohaven Pharmaceutical BHVN +68.39% (BHVN), which makes the migraine medication Nurtec ODT, for $11.6 billion.Pfizer’s M&A plans have been the subject of intensive speculation in recent months.
The company is sitting on a windfall of cash, earned both through sales of its Covid-19 vaccine and of Paxlovid, its Covid-19 pill.Pfizer will pay $148.50 a share in cash for Biohaven, a price that Pfizer said was roughly a 33% premium over Biohaven’s volume weighted average selling price over the past three months.Biohaven shares closed far below that average on Monday, at $83.14, and the stock has declined 39.7% so far this year.
The sale price represents a premium of nearly 79% to BioHaven’s closing share price on Monday.The deal is Pfizer’s largest in years. Recent acquisitions have been far smaller. In early April, Pfizer (ticker: PFE) announced plans to buy a privately held firm called ReViral for $525 million.
In March it completed the $5.4 billion acquisition of Arena Pharmaceuticals.The most recent acquisition that approached the size of the newly announced Biohaven deal was the purchase of Array BioPharma for $10.4 billion shortly before the pandemic, in the summer of 2019.Under the terms of the Biohaven acquisition, Pfizer will acquire the migraine drug Nurtec ODT, sold in Europe as Vydura.
It will also acquire Zavegepant, a similar drug currently under consideration from the Food and Drug Administration to treat migraines, and five preclinical drugs of the same class.All of the drugs are of a category known as CGRP inhibitors, a growing class of drugs used to treat migraine headaches. Nurtec ODT earned $462.5 million in revenue in 2021, outselling competitor drugs from Amgen (AMGN), Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA), and others.Pfizer said that Nurtec ODT is the top prescribed migraine medicine in its class in the U.S. Biohaven has run a major consumer-focused advertising campaign for Nurtec ODT, with advertisements featuring Khloé Kardashian.
The deal represents a return to the anti-CGRP landscape for Pfizer. In 2012, the company sold the rights to the anti-CGRP drug now marketed by Teva, known as Ajovy. It seemed as though Pfizer would miss out on the migraine drug boom, where competitors like Eli Lilly (LLY) were seeing new blockbusters bloom.Instead, Pfizer has bet heavily on the space, snapping up one of the key players. “We think this deal makes good strategic sense and it expands PFE’s pipeline to drive enhanced growth through 2030+,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Louise Chen wrote in a note Tuesday. “Also, investors we have spoken with have said that they want PFE to be more aggressive on the M&A front and to use the cash they have made from COVID vaccine and oral anti-viral sales to grow the company.”Pfizer said Tuesday it expects the deal to close by early next year.
The deal will also create a new company that will continue to develop the drugs in Biohaven’s current pipeline that are not CGRP inhibitors. That company will be led by Biohaven’s current CEO, Vlad Coric, and other executives on Biohaven’s current management team.
That company will also receive royalties on sales of Nurtec ODT and Zavegepant over $5.3 billion. Biohaven shareholders will receive a half a share of the new company for each Biohaven share.
Pfizer shares were 1.3% on Tuesday, while Biohaven shares were soaring 72%.The acquisition comes as biotech stocks continue their extraordinary slide.
Investors will be watching on Tuesday to see if the acquisition serves to arrest that slide, and whether the Pfizer deal signals a new wave of long-awaited biotech M&A."
Wonder if brain cancer would cause migraines... Pfizer idiots.
(20min delay)