Mylan CEO Bresch: We want Perrigo--but we don't need it

Perrigo CEO Joseph Papa

Perrigo ($PRGO) CEO Joseph Papa said this week that he doesn't intend to make it easy for Mylan to pull off a hostile takeover of his company. But the way Mylan ($MYL) sees it, if it loses out, it's not the end of the world.

"There are alternatives" to picking up the Irish pharma, Mylan chief exec Heather Bresch said on the company's Q2 call, as quoted by Reuters. "We like Perrigo, but we don't have to have Perrigo," she said.

Mylan's goals haven't changed, she stressed. The company still wants to be a top consolidator in the generics space, and a Perrigo buy "accelerates that for us," she said. But "there's a lot of different assets that can get us there," she pointed out. "There are things for sale all over the globe."

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch

Those things include U.S. products, smaller bolt-on acquisitions that could enhance Mylan's existing infrastructure, other lines of OTC products, and assets in Europe that would bolster the established products business it bought from Abbott ($ABT) that helped it invert to the Netherlands, the news service notes.

Mylan is competing in a generics arena that's seen rapid consolidation as of late, spurred not just by pharma's M&A wave, but also by consolidation among drug distributors. And the leader in the field, Teva ($TEVA), just got bigger, agreeing last week to shell out $40.5 billion for Allergan's ($AGN) copycat business.

Since the two inked that pact--which dealt a blow to Mylan's share price--some analysts have questioned how much Mylan ever wanted Perrigo as more than a takeover defense--and whether it even has the "financial firepower" to get a deal for Perrigo done.

Mylan would have to up its $205-per-share offer to about $230 per Perrigo share to make an "acceptable" offer for its target, Leerink Partners' Jason Gerberry wrote in a recent note to clients. And as Cowen & Co. analyst Ken Cacciatore wrote in his own investor note late last month, the proposed transaction "does not appear to create any value at prices above $205."

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