Eli Lilly will purchase about $64 million worth of SGX Pharmaceuticals's common stock in a definitive merger agreement in an all-cash deal. SGX is a biotechnology company working to develop oncology medications. The two companies have been working together since 2003 to figure out the 3D structure of certain drug receptors for Eli Lilly drugs using SGX's structure-guided drug discovery efforts. SGX also offers some pre-clinical oncology compounds and a fragment-based protein structure guided drug discovery technology
SGX shareholders must approve the $3.00 per share deal and the companies must clear some antitrust hurdles. If all goes well and they meet the closing conditions, the companies expect the deal to close before yearend. Its stock prices hit $7.95 per share last year at this time and had a 52-week low of $1.18 per share. After hours, the share price shot up to $3.00, despite a price of half that earlier in the day. Lilly shares remained fairly stable, at about $48 a share.