Read also: CEO Vigodman In Race To Save Teva Through ‘Inorganic Growth’
Just as JBN predicted (along with everybody else in the business) Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Decided to buy a major generic drug maker Auspex Pharmaceuticals Inc. for a reported $3.5 billion in cash, adding to their list of products drugs that help moderate movement disorders, according to a company statement released Monday.
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Auspex’s experimental products include new versions of Tetrabenazine, a product sold to calm the twitches associated with with Huntington’s disease and Tourette’s syndrome, and levodopa for Parkinson’s symptoms.
Teva will offer of $101 a share for Auspex, which Bloomberg notes is 42 percent above Auspex’s closing price on Friday. Auspex’s shares rose to $100.57 at 10:36 AM New York time.
“Teva and its competitors are under pressure to do deals for new technologies and the competition is intense, ” Ori Hershkovitz, founding partner and chief investment officer at hedge fund Nexthera Capital in New York, told Bloomberg. “This is a good deal for Teva. It will add to its product line in the central nervous system space and shows that it’s serious about growing its branded business.”
Teva CEO Erez Vigodman had to get some big deal in quickly, to overcome generic competition to Teva’s best-selling Copaxone (fighting multiple-sclerosis), which brings in close to half of the company’s profits.
Teva’s American Depositary Receipts rose 2.2 percent to $63.31, giving it a market value of just under $54 billion.
Teva has about $10 billion in debt capacity to spare, which suggests today’s tender offer was only the beginning of its shopping spree.
