American pharmaceutical giant AbbVie announced on Wednesday that it will acquire neuroscience drug developer Cerevel Therapeutics for approximately $8.7 billion to expand its product line and boost revenue.
Abbey focuses on fields such as immunology and virology. At present, the company's best-selling arthritis drug Humira is facing a large number of new competitors.
This is Abbott's second major acquisition in the past week, a few days after the company agreed to acquire anti-cancer drug developer ImmunoGen for $10.1 billion in cash, highlighting its strong interest in promising new drugs.
In 2018, Pfizer split its department for developing central nervous system drugs into an independent company and received an investment of $350 million from Bain Capital, which became Cerevel. Celevel was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020. Bain Capital and Pfizer hold approximately 36% and 15% of the shares, respectively.
Celevel is developing drugs to treat mental illnesses such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and epilepsy. Cerevel's experimental drug Emraclidine is currently in the mid-term trial stage for the treatment of schizophrenia.
Aberdeen will acquire Celevel for $45 per share in cash, and the transaction is expected to be completed by mid-2024.
This acquisition price is 22% higher than Cerevel's latest closing price and 73% higher than the stock's closing price on December 1st, when rumors began circulating that the company might be sold.
A few days before the announcement of Wednesday's merger and acquisition deal, there was an unusual surge in options trading and stock price at Celsius, with call options attracting a lot of investor interest. Since December 1st, the stock price of the biopharmaceutical company has risen by 42%.
After the announcement of the acquisition, Celevel's stock price rose nearly 16% in after hours trading on Wednesday, while Abbott's stock price remained unchanged.
According to a press release released by Abbott, Cerevel will particularly strengthen Abbott's treatment product portfolio in the field of mental and neurological disease treatment. The company stated, "There is still a significant amount of unmet market demand in these areas."
Bestselling drugs face fierce competition
Humira, a former best-selling drug in the world, is expected to see a sharp decline in revenue from Humira as more than six generic drugs of the drug enter the US market this year. Previously, this drug had already faced competition in Europe.
Humira's sales exceeded $21 billion in 2022 and are expected to fall below $9 billion next year.
At the same time, due to competition from Brukinsa from BeiGene and Calsequence from AstraZeneca, Abbrevica's best-selling leukemia drug Imbruvica saw a 20% decrease in sales in the third quarter.