Emergent Buys PaxVax for $270 Million
US specialty biopharma Emergent BioSolutions has agreed to buy PaxVax in an all-cash deal worth $270 million. PaxVax is majority owned by an affiliate of American private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.
The acquisition of the California-headquartered specialty vaccine manufacturer gives Emergent access to two vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) along with several others in the pipeline.
“The acquisition of PaxVax solidifies our position as a global leader in the public health threats market, expands our portfolio of only-in-class products, advances our growth strategy and progresses us towards the achievement of our 2020 financial and operational goals,” said Emergent’s CEO, Daniel Abdun-Nabi. He added that the acquisition would contribute incremental 2019 revenues of $70 million to $90 million and be accretive by the end of 2019.
Upon closure of the deal, expected in the fourth quarter of 2018, Emergent will acquire Vivotif, an oral typhoid fever vaccine and Vaxchora, a cholera vaccine. Vivotif is just one of two typhoid vaccines available in the US, while Vaxchora is the country’s only approved cholera vaccine.
Emergent also gains a solid development pipeline that includes an Adenovirus 4/7 candidate being developed for military personnel under contract with the US Department of Defense, as well as additional clinical-stage vaccine candidates targeting Chikungunya, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes, and other infection diseases such as hepatitis A, HIV and Zika.
PaxVax has around 250 employees and European-based cGMP biologics manufacturing facilities.
Emergent’s ambition is to achieve revenue of $1 billion by 2020. In October 2017, it acquired both Sanofi’s smallpox vaccine ACAM2000 and GlaxoSmithKline’s anthrax treatment raxibacumab.
