We sound like a broken record when it comes to Valeant Pharmaceuticals ($VRX): The Canadian drugmaker has made yet another acquisition. This time, it's Russia's Natur Produkt, in a deal potentially worth $180 million. The OTC company will help push Valeant's Russian sales to $175 million this year, the company says, and with Russia one of the faster-growing pharma markets on the globe, that's a nice beachhead for further expansion.
The Natur Produkt deal follows closely after Valeant snapped up some assets from Austrian branded-generics maker Gerot Lannach; some 90% of the sales from those products comes from Russia. And that deal came just one day after Valeant bought a 19.9% stake in Brazil's Pele Nova, which focuses on tissue regeneration. In February, Valeant bought the Florida-based eye-drug company Eyetech, plus a Brazilian supplements maker, Probiotica, for about $55 million.
That's on top of 6 deals in 2011--including PharmaSwiss and Sanofi's dermatology business Dermik--plus assorted licensing, product buys, and marketing arrangements. It's building up portfolios in dermatology, consumer drugs, generics, and neurology, spread into key emerging markets like Russia and Brazil. And more is surely to come: With CEO J. Michael Pearson's appetite, we'll soon be writing another headline: Valeant buys (fill in the blank here).
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