Dive Brief:
- Viatris is expanding its pain-drug portfolio, announcing Thursday it is buying Pacira BioSciences for $1.65 billion to acquire medicines that treat post-surgical and arthritis pain.
- Per deal terms, Viatris will pay Pacira investors $36.50 per share in cash, a 45% premium over Wednesday’s closing price. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, Viatris said.
- Pacira’s two biggest drugs booked $692 million in sales in 2025, growing about 4% over 2024. Viatris said it “expects to expand the products' reach across select markets within its global infrastructure.”
Dive Insight:
Pacira’s main products are the post-surgical pain drug Exparel and a therapy called Zilretta that treats knee pain associated with osteoarthritis. Both are novel formulations of the old and now-generic non-opioid pain relievers bupivacaine and triamcinolone.
Viatris has its own pain medications in Celebrex and Relpax, and could soon launch a fast-acting version of the drug meloxicam if the Food and Drug Administration clears it by a Dec. 27 decision deadline. Adding Pacira’s portfolio to the mix further fits with its strategy of “purchasing on-market, commercial assets,” Leerink analyst Daniel Clark wrote in a client note.
Clark added that the transaction should be “immediately accretive” to revenue and help grow earnings into the 2030s.
Still, generic erosion of Exparel is likely to begin in early 2030 because of patent settlements Pacira made last year with Fresenius Kabi and a Hengrui Pharma subsidiary. Those deals allow the two companies to begin marketing “high single digit” percentages of total U.S. volume and escalate to the 30% range within three years.
That settlement was helped along by manufacturing patents won in 2024 that now have pushed Exparel intellectual property protections out to 2044, according to the FDA’s Orange Book. Two other manufacturers are challenging those patents, however.
Patents covering Zilretta, meanwhile, are set to expire in 2031.
Viatris said Thursday that it “plans to leverage its intellectual property expertise and proven ability to extend product lifecycles and sustain meaningful sales” after generics arrive.
In initiating coverage on Pacira in September, Clark noted that Exparel’s growth has been constrained by hospital formularies that have been reluctant to add it to their usual post-surgical protocols. The drug recently won coverage from large insurer United Healthcare, leading Clark to believe there weren’t any other growth opportunities that could exceed current Wall Street targets.
With this transaction, “we do not anticipate a meaningfully different near-term trajectory, but do like that [Viatris] is executing against its capital deployment strategy and adding what should be steady sources of growth and margin expansion into the 2030s,” wrote Clark, who also covers Viatris.
