- The sale of covid vaccines caused Pfizer to overflow with cash.
- The purchase of Seagen aims to add more drugs and treatments to fight cancer to its product portfolio.
- Pfizer sold for more than 100 billion dollars in 2022, 22.750 million of which came from products for the covid.
Pfizer is considering acquiring biotech Seagen, according to the Wall Street Journal. The idea is part of the US laboratory’s strategy of adding different drugs aimed at fighting cancer.
The talks are at an early stage and, for now, there is no certainty that they will come to fruition. The main problem is not money (which Pfizer has plenty of), but reviews by antitrust agencies.
If the sale goes through, Seagen has a market value of $30 billion, and one could expect a higher premium to be added to that value.
Seagen was in talks in 2022 to be acquired by Merck. At the time, it was an acquisition that would have been worth $40 billion, but the parties failed to reach an agreement.
According to the US media, after talks with Merck failed, Seagen appointed David Epstein, a former Novartis executive, as CEO.
The Seagen purchase would help Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, add a promising suite of options related to immunotherapies to its line of cancer drugs.
In 2022, Pfizer sold more than $100 billion dollars. In vaccines, medicines and other coronavirus products alone, Pfizer made $22.75 billion.
Seagen is much smaller in revenue and profit volume. In 2022, it sold $2 billion in products.
Why Pfizer wants to buy Seagen
Last year, Pfizer bought the drugmaker Global Blood Therapeutics for about $4.9 billion and the portion it didn’t own of Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holdings for another $11 billion.
Seagen’s latest success is his drug tukysawhich is used to treat large cell lung cancer.
The drug is the first approved treatment for these types of conditions, and has been shown to slow the progression of the disease and lengthen the lives of patients.
Apart from Tukysa, Seagen is also working on other projects. The company is developing drugs to treat breast cancer, as well as a vaccine to treat specific types of other cancers.
He also researches treatments for autoimmune diseases.
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