(Reuters) – Swiss laboratory Novartis is in advanced discussions to acquire Cytokinetics in a transaction that could value the American biopharmaceutical company at more than $10 billion (9.14 billion euros), a company said on Monday. source familiar with the matter.
Novartis is reportedly poised to win the auction for Cytokinetics, ahead of other bidders including AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, according to the source.
A deal could be announced as soon as this week that would give Novartis access to Cytokinetics’ investigational treatment, aficamten, for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), an inherited chronic heart disease that can cause cardiac arrest.
Spokespeople for Cytokinetics and Novartis said the companies do not comment on market speculation.
On Monday, Cytokinetics shares rose more than 16% after the Wall Street Journal reported a possible takeover by Novartis.
On the Zurich Stock Exchange, Novartis shares were generally unchanged on Tuesday.
Stefan Schneider, pharmaceutical analyst at Vontobel, judges that an agreement would be logical for Novartis, which could thus compensate for the expected loss of American exclusivity of Entresto, its key drug in the cardiovascular field, he added.
“Novartis would probably have to pay a significant premium compared to the current share price,” according to the analyst, who however believes that the Swiss laboratory could easily manage a buyout at the price indicated by the source.
In late December, Cytokinetics stock jumped more than 82% after aficamten met the primary endpoint in a highly anticipated late-stage study, putting it on track to compete with a treatment from Bristol Myers Squibb.
(Written by Shubhendu Deshmukh, Mariam Sunny, Manas Mishra in Bangalore, Anirban Sen in New York and Oliver Hirt in Zurich; French version Kate Entringer, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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