A man walks past the Pfizer offices in New York.Mark Lennihan (AP)
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer is taking advantage of record revenues and profits from its Covid-fighting products to invest in its future growth.
The US company announced on Tuesday the purchase of Biohaven Pharmaceutical, a biotechnology company specializing in neurological diseases and rare disorders whose main product is a treatment for migraine, both chronic and acute.
Pfizer will pay 11,600 million dollars in cash (about 11,000 million euros) to take over the firm from Connecticut (USA), with a premium of more than 75% on Monday's closing price.
Biohaven shares have soared on the stock market this Tuesday at the opening of the market to adjust to the price of the offer and rose more than 70%.
The purchase is Pfizer's biggest in nearly six years, since it bought Medivation in 2016 to bolster itself in oncology.
He will pay for it with available cash, generated largely by income from his covid vaccine and his pill to treat the same disease.
In little more than a year, the vaccine already generates more than half of Pfizer's income.
However, the sales growth prospects associated with covid have an expiration date as the pandemic subsides.
future growth
Hence, the company is hungry for acquisitions that can provide future growth.
Nurtec ODT (rimegepant), approved for both the prevention and treatment of migraine, Biohaven's flagship product, fits into that strategy.
Hand in hand with Pfizer, with its financial potential and its distribution networks, the drug could be even more commercially successful.
Pfizer and Biohaven were not strangers to each other.
In November 2021, they signed an agreement for the marketing of two of their drugs outside the United States.
An agreement that was signed with the purchase of 2.6% of Biohaven by Pfizer for 350 million dollars.
In addition to the offer price ($148.5 per share), Biohaven shareholders will also receive one share of New Biohaven, a new publicly traded company, for every two shares of the company.
That company will be eligible to receive certain royalties if sales of Biohaven's two main drugs (rimegepant and zavegepant, another pending headache product) exceed $5.25 billion.