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| Bavarian Nordic CEO Paul Chaplin |
Despite the M&A wave across biopharma that doesn't show signs of slowing, Bavarian Nordic's top dog has said his company isn't interested in getting involved.
On Tuesday, CEO Paul Chaplin told Reuters his company isn't for sale, but conceded "you can't stop interest if there is interest."
Bavarian Nordic, best known for selling its smallpox vaccine to governments as a bioterror precaution, has recently branched into cancer vaccines with a $1 billion Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY) deal and Ebola with a Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) pact. And within the past year, share prices have nearly tripled, a change in direction Citi analyst Ramaswamy Narayanan attributed to new leadership in Chaplin.
"The new management has basically been more active in externalization of its assets rather than keeping everything close to its chest," Narayanan told Reuters.
The announcement could come as news to vaccines deal-seekers like Pfizer ($PFE), whose vaccines president Susan Silbermann said in March wouldn't discount M&A as an option for future growth. And CFO Frank D'Amelio said in April that the company is "agnostic" to the size of a deal.
Bavarian Nordic isn't just working on its new collaborations, though, as earlier this month it announced two successful late-stage trials of its flagship smallpox vaccine as it continues to develop that business, which accounted for more than 80% of its revenue in 2014.
- read more from Reuters
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