Tak­ing dou­ble Covid-19 hits, Mer­ck writes off $170M for scrapped drug, high­lights $600M in missed sales

Mer­ck ac­quired MK-7110, the Covid-19 drug orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped by On­coIm­mune, for $425 mil­lion in cash. The de­ci­sion to scrap it has cost at least $170 mil­lion on pa­per.

The write-off amount was among a few de­tails the phar­ma gi­ant di­vulged in its lat­est quar­ter­ly fil­ing, which of­fered a clos­er look at its ill-fat­ed pan­dem­ic R&D cam­paign.

Here’s what we’ve learned: The $50 mil­lion that Mer­ck had in­vest­ed in the new ven­ture that On­coIm­mune spun out with every­thing that’s not re­lat­ed to MK-7110 was good for a 20% stake, mark­ing a $17 mil­lion pre­mi­um for On­coIm­mune’s shares.

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