Novo Nordisk’s CEO won’t comment on whether the Danish company will go even higher in its bidding war for Metsera but said the Big Pharma “feels this deal will be closed.”
Last week brought the bombshell news that Novo had made a fresh play to buy the obesity biotech, despite Pfizer having announced over a month ago its own planned acquisition of Metsera for $4.9 billion, with a further $2.4 billion also on the table in relation to certain milestones.
In the following days, Pfizer has unleashed a pair of lawsuits to prevent Metsera from slipping from its grasp, while both Big Pharmas have reworked their offers. Novo is now offering an equity value of $10 billion for the biotech across upfront and milestone payments, the company confirmed yesterday.
Speaking to journalists on a third-quarter earnings call this morning, Novo CEO Mike Doustdar said that if the pharma “did not feel that we would be able to close the deal, we would probably not have entered the transaction.”
“We have discussed this with our external stakeholders, and feel that this deal will be closed,” Doustdar added.
The timeline outlined by Metsera—which Pfizer has pushed back on—is that the U.S. pharma has two business days starting yesterday to come back with a better offer than Novo’s. When asked whether Novo would consider raising its own bid in response to a potential counteroffer from Pfizer, Doustdar was tight-lipped.
“I will not be able to tell you if I'm going to go higher or not, but I will be able to tell you that we find the Metsera assets incredibly complementary to Novo Nordisk products and pipeline as well as, of course, our now much more focused strategy of diabetes and obesity,” the CEO explained.
“So we are very much interested in these assets,” he added.
One of Pfizer’s lawsuits against Novo and Metsera argues that their proposed deal “constitutes an anticompetitive action by Novo Nordisk to protect its dominant market position in GLP-1s by capturing and killing a nascent American competitor.”
To back up this argument, Pfizer announced last week that it had secured early clearance from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the deal’s waiting period to come to an end.
Speaking in the context of these claims, Doustdar argued that the obesity market is “incredibly competitive,” with “pretty much every well-known pharma entering this field.”
“We welcome all these competitors,” the CEO explained. “I think it's good for the billions of patients out there that are suffering. They need choice and options.”
“So we believe that we will have the right dialogue with [the] FTC,” he added.
The battle for Metsera comes at a sensitive time for Novo and the leadership of Doustdar—who took the helm in August against a backdrop of shrinking obesity market share. This morning’s third-quarter earnings results showed the company is taking a 9 billion Danish kroner ($1.4 billion) hit from a wide-ranging restructuring that has included plans to lay off about 9,000 employees worldwide and shutter the company’s cell therapy R&D work.