Move follows company’s strategy to divest certain assets and focus on its pharma business.
Evotec will acquire Renovis in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at approximately $151.8 million. Evotec reports that it will apply for NASDAQ listing.
“By combining Evotec’s drug discovery and development know-how with Renovis’ medicinal chemistry and target validation expertise, we expect to form a global biopharmaceutical company with worldclass discovery capabilities, a strong pipeline in CNS disorders and several significant research partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, and Roche,” says Jorn Aldag, president and CEO of Evotec.
Evotec gains a late-stage preclinical pipeline focusing on areas of neurological and inflammatory diseases. Also, through Renovis’ lead preclinical program in collaboration with Pfizer, Evotec will be eligible to receive milestone payments of more than $170 million and double-digit royalties on worldwide net sales of products successfully developed and commercialized.
The merged company reports pro-forma cash of approximately $175 million as of August 31. This does not include the approximate $64 million from the disposal of Evotec’s chemical development business to Aptuit.
“Over the past year we executed our strategy and streamlined our business by spinning out noncore assets,” Aldag explains. Besides the divestiture of the chemical development arm, in December 2006, Evotec Technologies was sold to PerkinElmer for about $30 million. The company also transferred its library synthesis business into a joint venture with Indian RSIL. “We are now very well funded to drive three clinical programs to their next inflection points, as well as three later-stage preclinical projects into the clinic in 2008,” Aldag says.
