Yahoo Finance Sanofi (SNY) to Buy Kadmon for $1.9B, Add cGVHD Drug Rezurock
Sanofi SNY announced a definitive agreement to acquire New York-based biopharma company, Kadmon Holdings KDMN for $9.50 per share or a total equity value of $1.9 billion. The acquisition, if successfully closed, will add Rezurock (belumosudil), Kadmon’s FDA-approved treatment for chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) after the failure of at least two prior lines of systemic therapy. Rezurock was approved by the FDA in July and became available last month.
The offer price of $9.50 represented a premium of 79% to Kadmon’s closing price on Sep 7. The board of directors of both the companies approved the deal. Kadmon’s shares were up 73.8% in pre-market trading on Sep 8.
The all-cash deal will strengthen Sanofi’s transplant business, which includes medicines like Thymoglobulin and Mozobil. A phase II study is also ongoing to evaluate Rezurock in for the treatment of diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis while Kadmon’s pipeline includes candidates for immune and fibrotic diseases as well as immuno-oncology therapies.
So far this year, Sanofi’s shares have risen 6.2% compared with the industry’s 15.6% increase.
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Sanofi has significantly stepped up its acquisition and alliance activity over the past few years. Among the more recent deals, in August, Sanofi announced a definitive agreement to acquire its current partner for some pipeline candidates, Translate Bio TBIO for approximately $3.2 billion. The acquisition, if successfully closed, will allow Sanofi to leverage Translate Bio’s mRNA technology platform to develop therapeutics and vaccines and also accelerate the development of their existing partnered pipeline programs. In April, Sanofi completed the acquisition of Kiadis, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing the next generation, ‘off-the-shelf’, NK cell-therapies. In the same month, it also acquired Kymab, a small biotech,which added KY1005, a potential treatment for a range of immune and inflammatory diseases, to Sanofi’s pipeline.
Sanofi bought small cancer biotech Synthorx in early 2020 which added Synthorx’s lead pipeline asset, THOR-707 to Sanofi’s immuno-oncology portfolio. The Principia acquisition in 2020 added BTK inhibitors like tolebrutinib and rilzabrutinib to its pipeline, which can address a variety of serious illnesses.
Sanofi has collaboration agreements with companies like Regeneron REGN among others. Sanofi has developed and markets Dupixent, Kevzara, and Libtayo in collaboration with Regeneron
Sanofi currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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