Biogen CEO sees no burning want for extra acquisitions

By Deena Beasley

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB) expects income from new launches to exceed its present gross sales by 2028 and doesn’t really feel the necessity to chase further enterprise growth offers, the corporate’s CEO mentioned.

“The view on the market within the analyst group is that the way forward for Biogen relies on the following deal that we do and that is not a view that we share inside Biogen,” CEO Chris Viehbacher advised Reuters in an interview on Monday in the course of the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Convention in San Francisco.

Final Friday, Biogen supplied to purchase Sage Therapeutics, its advertising companion on a drug to deal with postpartum despair. Sage noticed its share worth fall round 76% final 12 months after a collection of scientific setbacks.

Viehbacher declined to touch upon the transaction, citing authorized restrictions.

Shares of Biogen have dropped about 42% during the last 12 months.

“Whereas the deal could make monetary sense for Biogen, we expect it does little to alter the narrative across the firm, and extra revenue-generating offers are wanted to alter the corporate’s development profile,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman mentioned in a analysis word.

Viehbacher mentioned Biogen as “gained conviction” on the energy of its present pipeline, together with amyloid-targeting Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi and BIIB080, an experimental drug that targets tau, a unique protein discovered within the brains of Alzheimer’s sufferers.

“We’re doubling down in Alzheimer’s,” the CEO mentioned, noting that information is predicted this 12 months on an FDA submitting for subcutaneous Leqembi and use of the drug as upkeep remedy.

He acknowledged that Leqembi gross sales haven’t lived as much as the loftiest expectations, however mentioned the trajectory is strong and the corporate is shifting its advertising technique to focus on newly-diagnosed sufferers.

Viehbacher mentioned Biogen additionally has late-stage research underway with felzartamab in uncommon immune-related indications together with kidney transplant sufferers and for experimental lupus medicine.

“It’s onerous to search out belongings price paying for … there may be nonetheless an expectation of some fairly excessive premiums available in the market,” he mentioned.

The CEO mentioned Biogen has “groups of individuals” on the healthcare convention this week. Eventually 12 months’s assembly, these groups checked out 100 corporations and ended up doing two offers: a collaboration to discover molecular glue degraders with Neomorph and the acquisition of Human Immunology Biosciences.