Pfizer Inc agreed to pay $5.4 billion in cash for acquiring Global Blood Therapeutics to bolster its pipeline, as it seeks to capitalise on a boom in income from its COVID-19 vaccination and therapy and to counteract a projected slowdown in Covid-19 product demand as instances reduce.
Pfizer said on Monday that it will pay $68.50 per share, a 7.3% premium to Global Blood’s Friday closing price and a 42.7% premium to Thursday’s closing price, before the Wall Street Journal reported that Pfizer was in advanced discussions to purchase the firm. Pfizer will expand its rare illness therapy business with Oxbryta after acquiring Global Blood Therapeutics.
Due to COVID-19 vaccine sales, Pfizer’s 2021 revenue of $81.3 billion was nearly quadruple that of the previous year. Pfizer expects to make over $100 billion in revenue this year with the addition of its COVID-19 antiviral medication Paxlovid, although sales of both medicines are projected to drop in the future.
Pfizer has seen an exceptional increase in sales since the global launch of its Covid-19 vaccine, developed in collaboration with BioNTech. However, sales have begun to decrease since last year. However, with cash in hand from the sale of its Covid-19 vaccine, Pfizer has been on the search for acquisitions that may generate billions of dollars in yearly revenues by the end of the decade.
Pfizer paid $11.6 billion for migraine medicine producer Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding in May, and it just concluded a $6.7 billion agreement to acquire Arena Pharmaceuticals.
“We have very deliberately taken a strategy of diversification in our M&A deals,” Aamir Malik, Pfizer’s senior dealmaker, said in an interview. He stated that the company’s focus for the second part of the decade will be on increasing growth rather than major acquisitions that produce value through cost cutting. “We think that there are opportunities across all therapeutic areas that we’re active in,” he added.
