Yet another piece of Valeant’s business is potentially up for grabs.
The Canadian drugmaker is considering selling off Egyptian drugmaker Amoun Pharma, Bloomberg’s sources say. It agreed to snap up Amoun last July for $800 million, noting that the foothold in Egypt would give it a springboard for further Middle East expansion.
That potential is still there, and could draw interest from other pharma companies looking to grow in emerging markets. Valeant, though, needs the cash to pay down a debt pileup it created over years as a serial buyer.
Amoun’s current execs could also pursue a management buyout with aid from financial investors, the news service notes.
But Amoun isn’t the only emerging markets asset that Valeant may jettison, according to Bloomberg. It’s also weighing a sale of some of its ops in Latin America, a region CFO Robert Rosiello told investors earlier this week “has seen continued good growth.”
And outside of the emerging markets arena, rumors are swirling that several other pieces of the Valeant puzzle could soon be up for grabs, too. Its 2013 skincare buy Obagi Medical Products, laggard cancer vaccine Provenge and controversial, jacked-up heart meds Isuprel and Nitropress are among the assets hanging in the balance, Bloomberg reported last month.
If Valeant can lessen its debt burden--all the while reducing “the complexity” of its business, as CEO Joseph Papa put it on the company’s Q1 conference call--it’ll have one less problem to worry about. It’s also dealing with a raft of investigations, a bottom-feeding stock price and a Walgreens distribution deal that’s hurting its already-troubled dermatology business--among other hurdles.
As Papa said recently though, the asset sales he wants to execute aren’t necessarily essential to getting back on track. “I don’t need to sell anything,” he told a group at the UBS Global Healthcare Conference.
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