The terms are subject to approval by the ordinary and extraordinary shareholders’ meeting scheduled to be held on May 3. The pharma giant plans to retain a 30% shareholding in the new company that it expects to be the largest API producer in the EU with annual sales of around €1 billion.

With the listing, Sanofi plans to sell a 12% stake in the new company to investment group EPIC Bpifrance, acting on behalf of the French state. Around 58% of EuroAPI’s shares are to be distributed via a dividend in kind.

The largest investors in EuroAPI have committed to a lock-up period of one or two years respectively. Sanofi and EPIC Bpifrance will hold onto their shares for two years, while L’Oreal, Sanofi’s largest shareholder, has committed to one year, as has EuroAPI’s CEO, Karl Rotthier, a former CEO of Dutch drugmaker Centrient Pharmaceuticals.

Following the distribution and EPIC Bpifrance’s purchase of the planned 12% stake, the Paris-based pharma group said it will no longer control the API maker, and this will have a slightly accretive impact on its 2022 business operating income (BOI) margin.

Plans to launch the new company were announced in January 2021. At the time, Sanofi said the intent was to address the “recently increasing medicine shortages that critically impact patient care.” EuroAPI, it said, will ensure additional API supply capacities for Europe and beyond and help balance the industry’s heavy reliance on APIs sourced from other such as China and India.

Six European production sites belonging to Sanofi Active Ingredient Solutions in Brindisi, Italy; Frankfurt, Germany; Haverhill, UK; St Aubin les Elbeuf, France; Budapest, Hungary and Vertolaye, France, are being rolled into the new company, which Sanofi said can produce some 200 APIs and offer services "across the R&D continuum."

With around 3,350 employees, EuroAPI posted 2021 sales of €893 million in 2021. The company expects to be world's top manufacturer of small molecules and its second largest API maker in revenue terms.

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist