(12:02 GMT) *Ipsen Has Financial Firepower for More Acquisitions, Chief Business Officer Says (12:02 GMT) *Ipsen Looking at Deals to Build Hematology Business, Other Oncology Assets, Executive Says (12:02 GMT) *Ipsen Considering Deals in Areas Adjacent to Rare Liver Diseases, Executive Says (12:02 GMT) *Ipsen Also Looking at Deals in China, But Not as High Priority, Executive Says (12:02 GMT) Drugmaker Ipsen Sees More Deals Coming to Continue Buying Spree — Interview
By Adria Calatayud
French drugmaker Ipsen sees gaps in its portfolio and has the financial means to fill them, its chief business officer said, signaling more deals are in the pipeline after a pair of acquisitions this week.
The Paris-based company this week reached agreements to buy Kartos Therapeutics and Memo Therapeutics for a combined sum that could exceed $2.55 billion if targets are hit, adding drug candidates for a rare blood cancer and a viral infection common in kidney transplants.
Ipsen's chief business officer, Philippe Lopes-Fernandes, said the company is working on deals to continue to build its existing franchises in oncology, rare diseases and neuroscience.
"We have a lot of firepower left," Lopes-Fernandes said in an interview.
The structure of this week's acquisitions--with fixed initial payments that represent a fraction of the total potential price, and the rest subject to hitting certain development, regulatory and commercial goals--means the company can still fund more, Lopes-Fernandes said.
After both deals, Ipsen is expected to end the year with a gross cash position of about 1.5 billion euros ($1.72 billion), and net cash of around 500 million euros, according to an estimate by analysts at RBC Capital Markets.
Ipsen, like many of its bigger rivals, sold its consumer-healthcare arm years ago, honing its focus on more lucrative--but also riskier--innovative specialty-care medicines. The company typically goes after niche disease indications.
Oncology is Ipsen's biggest business by sales, with more than two-thirds of the group's total, and the company is expanding into blood cancers through deals like Kartos and last year's purchase of ImCheck Therapeutics.
"We are building this [hematology] franchise and we are looking at a few things that could continue to build that," Lopes-Fernandes said. "But we have very good expertise in solid tumors and we are looking at targets there."
In rare diseases, Lopes-Fernandes said Ipsen is trying to widen its portfolio beyond liver drugs. The segment--assembled mostly through dealmaking--is the group's fastest-growing, thanks to the rising uptake of two medicines for rare liver diseases that were approved in recent years.
"We are going to continue to see what we can add to rare liver [diseases], but we are looking at adjacent areas," he said.
For neuroscience, Ipsen relies mainly on its internal research-and-development efforts, but Lopes-Fernandes said the company might pursue select transactions to strengthen its pipeline.
Several big drugmakers have set their sights on China to secure rights for innovative ideas for medicines to treat cancer, obesity and other diseases. Lopes-Fernandes said Ipsen has been active in the country in the past and is evaluating a few potential deals right now, but that competition from big pharma companies has pushed up the price of Chinese assets.
"We don't make it such a priority as other companies, first because we have the luxury not to need to do hundreds of deals every year, and also because we have a strong belief that there's other places, like Europe for example, where there's very interesting innovation," Lopes-Fernandes said.
Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com