Novo Nordisk to Buy Emisphere Technologies and Drug-Delivery Platform for $1.8 Billion
November 06 2020 - 02:49AM
Dow Jones News
By Dominic Chopping
Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk AS said Friday that
it has agreed to buy Emisphere Technologies Inc. and the royalty
stream obligations of its Eligen oral drug-delivery platform for a
total of $1.8 billion.
Emisphere Technologies is a drug-delivery company with
proprietary technologies, such as Eligen SNAC, that enable drug
therapies to be provided in a tablet formulation.
Novo Nordisk and Emisphere have collaborated since 2007 and
Emisphere's Eligen SNAC technology is used by Novo Nordisk under an
existing license deal.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Novo Nordisk will buy all
outstanding shares in Emisphere for $1.35 billion and will also
acquire the Eligen SNAC royalty stream obligations owed to MHR Fund
Management LLC, the largest shareholder of Emisphere, for $450
million.
The transaction will be debt financed and won't impact Novo
Nordisk's operating profit outlook for 2020 or the share buyback
program.
The acquisition is expected to have a net negative impact on
operating profit of less than 1% in 2021 and broadly neutral to
positive impact in the following years, it said.
"We intend to apply and further develop the [Eligen SNAC]
technology and use it on current and future pipeline assets with
the aim of making more biologic medicines orally available for
patients," Novo Nordisk's Chief Scientific Officer Mads Krogsgaard
Thomsen said.
Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 06, 2020 02:34 ET (07:34 GMT)
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