The activist investor Starboard Value has taken a stake in Pfizer, according to media reports, following the drugmaker’s months of lackluster results as it came out of the pandemic and sought the next phase of its strategy. Exactly what Starboard wants wasn’t immediately clear, according to the Wall Street Journal , which first reported the news and said the investor had taken a roughly $1 billion stake. WSJ said Starboard had been talking with former Pfizer CEO Ian Read and former CFO Frank D’Amelio, but didn’t say what role, if any, they might play. Pfizer has been struggling to get back into investors’ good graces as its stock $PFE has struggled, losing more than half its value from a pandemic peak. It has tried to reload its pipeline through M&A deals, repeatedly cut costs to shrink its pandemic-era footprint, revealed a major new focus on oncology, and announced changes among several top executives, including its head of R&D and commercial leaders . The fact that it’s taken those actions and still drawn an activist will almost certainly raise questions about whether Starboard will push for something more dramatic. “We do not see low-hanging fruit to boost shareholder value,” a Leerink analyst said in a note to clients after the news broke, citing the company’s prior moves. A Pfizer spokesperson declined to comment. Starboard has previously shown a willingness to take its fights with reluctant companies public, making the case to investors for why changes are needed, pushing for board seats or corporate actions like a sale or breakup. The company’s M&A deals, meant to reload its pipeline, haven’t yet solved its needs. A huge bet on cancer through the $43 billion acquisition of Seagen will take years to pay off. And its 2022 acquisition of Global Blood Therapeutics has blown up in the company’s face after Pfizer had to pull the sickle cell drug at the heart of the $5.4 billion takeover from the market. Starboard, run by investor Jeff Smith, has a history in healthcare. It’s taken previous stakes in Bristol Myers Squibb — in a failed attempt to stop its $74 billion deal with Celgene in 2019; it took a large stake in Parexel and pushed the company to sell itself in 2017; and it won board seats off of Perrigo after a lengthy back-and-forth. The Perrigo episode also revealed a connection to Pfizer — one of the people Starboard placed on the drugmaker’s board was Jeff Kindler, Read’s predecessor at Pfizer. Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the reported size of Starboard’s stake in Pfizer.

并购IPO

2024-09-12

·BioPharmaDive

Fulcrum shares collapse as Sanofi-partnered muscular dystrophy drug fails key test

Dive Brief:An experimental drug Fulcrum Therapeutics has been testing against a type of muscular dystrophy failed a Phase 3 trial, prompting the biotechnology company to suspend development of the program.Despite claiming to see positive signs in a previous test, Fulcrum said the drug, dubbed losmapimod, couldnt replicate those results. Losmapimod missed its main study objective, failing to meaningfully improve range of motion in people with a disease known, in short, as FSHD. The therapy also fell short on a number of secondary study goals.The results issued Thursday come only four months after Sanofi paid Fulcrum $80 million up front, and dangled another $975 million in future payments, for partial rights to losmapimod. Shares of the Massachusetts-based biotech fell roughly 60% during midday trading and were changing hands at just over $3 apiece, less than the value of its cash reserves.Dive Insight:FSHD, or facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, is a neuromuscular disorder characterized by muscle weakness in the face, shoulders and arms. Its primarily caused by a genetic error that leads to overexpression of a protein called DUX4.Fulcrum has long believed blocking an enzyme involved in the production of DUX4 with losmapimod a drug GSK discovered and originally developed for a heart condition would improve outcomes. Now, though, the company is changing course to focus on its only other drug in clinical testing, a potential treatment for sickle cell disease.The Phase 3 trial that read out Thursday randomized 260 people with FSHD to receive either losmapimod or a placebo. The studys main objective was to prove treatment could lead to a benefit in reachable workspace after 48 weeks. Trial investigators also measured changes in volunteers muscle and fat levels, shoulder strength and scores on surveys evaluating quality of life and overall health.The drug missed all of those marks, according to Fulcrum, which plans to reveal full results at a future medical meeting. In the meantime, the company is turning its attention to a sickle cell drug expected to produce Phase 1 data next year.The fresh results led to a share sell-off and a flurry of stock downgrades from Wall Street analysts. In a research note issued Thursday, Stifel analyst Dae Gon Ha also expressed skepticism about the prospects of the sickle cell drug. We think it will take some time for investor sentiment to improve, he wrote.Fulcrums $274 million in cash, along with expected operational streamlining following the study setback, should give it enough money to get to key data readouts, Ha wrote. But investors may be reluctant to buy shares until there is more information on the progress of the sickle cell trial and assurances about the drugs safety, he added.Last year, the Food and Drug Administration suspended testingof that therapy for six months. '

临床3期财报临床失败临床2期

100 项与 Sickle cell disease(Orna) 相关的药物交易

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