Ani Pharma picks up generic player for a cool $210M, turbocharging its manufacturing and R&D wings
Contract manufacturing work has grown at a rapid clip the past year given demand caused in part by Covid-19. Big players are doubling down on their production footprints, and even small players are taking big swings to get into the game.
Minnesota’s Ani Pharmaceuticals will shell out $89.5 million in cash and $74 million in equity to acquire New Jersey generics player Novitium Pharma, allowing it rapidly scale its manufacturing and R&D infrastructure for generics, the drugmaker said this week.
The deal comes with an additional $46.5 million in potential future payouts, bringing the overall value of the acquisition to around $210 million, Ani said.
Ani will immediately add Novitium’s advanced pipeline of generic drugs, where it has projected 25 or more new launches in the next year. But the acquisition will also bolster contract manufacturing and R&D work moving forward.
Novitium will bring nine new customers into the fold as well as a 50,000-square-foot facility in East Windsor, New Jersey facility with 27 manufacturing suites and eight clinical suites. That facility is also currently undergoing a 20,000-square-foot expansion that will bring another 18 manufacturing suites online. The company’s annual production capacity is around 2 billion doses of its tablets, capsules, liquid suspensions and solutions, powders and powder for oral suspension, controlled release and potent compounds.
On the R&D side, Novitium will bring over the 21 abbreviated new drug applications it currently has filed with the FDA and more than 30 other products under development, Ani said. The drugmaker also has three 505(b)(2) candidates in oncology and hypertension under development — effectively drugs that fall somewhere in the middle between generics and NDAs.
The acquisition comes as business in the contract manufacturing field has run red hot in recent months with Covid-19 upping the demand for supply chain redundancy and big work orders.
Just this week, major CDMO player Thermo Fisher Scientific announced plans to drop $600 million into its global manufacturing network as part of a move to ramp up its short-term Covid-19 work and more than double its capacity for the future.
Targeting 11 sites spread throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, Thermo expects to add 1,500 employees to its global workforce in order to expand its bioprocessing capacity for single-use tech, cell culture media and purification. The expansions are set to be completed by 2022.