Dive Brief:
- With both Johnson & Johnson and Novartis as potential buyers, news that Pharmacyclics, maker of Imbruvica (ibrutinib), is for sale pushed the stock price up 17% on Wednesday.
- Imbruvica is a top-selling oncology drug used to treat B-cell mediated blood cancers, including chronic lymphocytic leukemia and mantle cell leukemia.
- Based on the stock price, Pharmacyclics is currently valued in the range of $17 billion. Analysts are anticipating a buy price in the $17 billion to $18 billion range.
Dive Insight:
Every year seems to get better for Pharmacyclics, which has seen its stock increase 700% in the last three years as it gets more indications for Imbruvica and continues to develop its pipeline.
As both J&J and Novartis weigh their bids, this could end up being the biggest biotech acquisition in recent history (at least since Sanofi/Genzyme). In fact, many analysts contend that Pharmacyclics is worth the investment, as analysts are looking towards $2.5 billion in annual revenues by 2017.