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Stallergenes Set to Begin Looking for U.S. Partner for Allergy Treatment
Stallergenes, Europe’s second- largest maker of allergy medicines, will start looking for a U.S. partner for its Oralair hay-fever treatment after meeting with U.S. regulators later this year.
The Antony, France-based company plans to begin its search in the fourth quarter, after a meeting with the Food and Drug Administration, Chief Executive Officer Albert Saporta said in an interview yesterday. Stallergenes has hired Torreya Partners LLC to help it find a partner. It aims to have a partnership agreement by June next year, he said.
“We are all set to begin our search for a partner,” Saporta said. “The kind of partner we are looking for must have a strong sales force in the U.S. and good knowledge of how the FDA works.”
A global pharmaceutical company that already has allergy medicines would be the ideal partner, though large drugmakers who want to enter the business or smaller U.S. businesses also could be interested in a partnership, Saporta said. Abbott Laboratories, Sanofi-Aventis SA, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Forest Laboratories Inc. are among the potential partners for Stallergenes, Christophe-Raphael Ganet, an analyst at Oddo Securities in Lyon, wrote in a July 19 note to investors.
Sanofi-Aventis SA, which is looking for acquisitions as it seeks to replenish its pipeline of products, is “one of the possible partners, but there are many others,” Saporta said during a meeting with analysts in Paris today. “We would be happy to do a partnership with them,” Saporta said, adding that there are “no official contacts” at this stage with Paris- based Sanofi, France’s biggest drugmaker.
Shares Gain
Stallergenes shares gained 1.02 euros, or 1.8 percent, to 57.20 euros as of 2:30 p.m. in Paris trading, paring losses for the year to 2.8 percent and giving the company a market value of 758.1 million euros ($966 million). Shares in Danish rival Alk- Abello A/S have lost 24 percent of their value in the period.
Saporta said it may make sense for Stallergenes to find a partner before the filing with the FDA, although it hasn’t made a final decision on this. The company aims to ask U.S. regulators to approve Oralair next year, he said.
“It’s likely that it will be our partner who does the filing with the FDA” Saporta told analysts today. “It makes sense because such a partner will know the FDA better than us and have more experience on how to do a filing properly.”
Stallergenes, which already sells the grass-pollen tablets in Germany, will start selling Oralair in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovakia before the end of the year, the company said. It is unlikely it will be allowed to begin selling it in Italy, France and Spain before next year, Saporta said. Oralair may not be reimbursed in Italy, he added.
Seeking Acquisitions
The company will also file its Actair dust mite tablets with German authorities by yearend and aims to start selling the treatment there by 2012, and in some other European countries by 2013. Its first birch pollen tablets will probably be sold at the end of 2013 or the beginning of 2014, Saporta added.
Stallergenes continues seeking acquisitions in countries such as Spain, Italy and Germany, Saporta said. The company has “great flexibility” in financing terms and could resort to a stock sale.
“The players in our market, except the two leaders, have sales between 1 and 100 million euros and these are the kinds of companies we’re looking at,” Saporta said during the interview. “A consolidation is going on in this business and we believe we should be a part of this consolidation.”
Saporta declined to say whether Stallergenes is already in talks with potential targets and whether it expects to make one or more acquisitions soon.
Higher Profit
Stallergenes said in a statement yesterday its first-half profit jumped 51 percent to 20.2 million euros on increased sales of Oralair. Revenue increased 13 percent to 110.6 million euros.
Saporta reiterated that Stallergenes expects revenue growth of more than 10 percent this year.
“We remain cautious on our guidance,” he said. “Treatments for the coming pollen season are based on the previous season, and it wasn’t a very good one.”
Saporta reiterated that Stallergenes isn’t opposed to a takeover offer from a larger pharmaceutical company.
A takeover “isn’t impossible,” he said. “The first step could be a partnership and an offer to buy the whole company could come afterwards. Why not? But this isn’t the goal. The partnership is our goal.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Albertina Torsoli in Paris at atorsoli@bloomberg.net
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