Pfizer clinches $10bn Metsera deal as Novo Nordisk retreats

One of the astir compelling acquisition sagas successful the pharma manufacture successful caller times has travel to an end, with Pfizer prevailing implicit Novo Nordisk successful a fierce bidding warfare to get obesity biotech Metsera.

After mulling implicit competing offers from some Pfizer and Novo Nordisk, Metsera has decided to spell with the former’s $10bn offer. As per the agreed merger deal, Pfizer volition get Metsera for up to $86.25 per share, consisting of $65.60 per stock successful currency and a contingent worth close (CVR) of up to $20.65 per share.

Novo Nordisk said it does not mean to marque an accrued connection to get Metsera.

In a statement, Metsera said it “determined that [Pfizer’s] revised presumption correspond the champion transaction for shareholders, some from the position of worth and certainty of closing.”

The statement marks the last section successful an aggravated fight, which included lambasting statements and ineligible retaliation, to bargain a institution whose exertion could unlock the adjacent frontier of the obesity market.

Metsera’s offerings centre astir longer-lasting injectable and oral peptides for value loss. The biotech has developed a level that allows for little predominant dosing – targeting monthly administration. This would beryllium a important betterment connected the play dosing seen with approved value nonaccomplishment therapies.

The crown jewel successful Metsera’s portfolio is MET-097i, an injectable glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) touted arsenic having the imaginable for some play and monthly dosing schedules. Both frequencies are successful Phase II improvement (NCT06897202 and NCT06973720). Phase IIa information with MET-097i dosed connected some a play and monthly regimen person demonstrated robust value nonaccomplishment aft 12 weeks.

Not lone does the Metsera buyout supply an avenue into the lucrative obesity market, but it besides shores up gross streams arsenic patent expiries loom for Pfizer. The large pharma institution is expected to suffer marketplace exclusivity for Eliquis (apixaban), Ibrance (palbociclib), and Xtandi (enzalutamide) implicit the coming years. Blood thinner Eliquis unsocial generated $13.3bn successful planetary income successful 2024.

Metsera’s choosing of Pfizer means the 2 companies volition proceed a narration that already has well-formed connection channels. Pfizer primitively agreed to bargain the biotech for up to $7.3bn successful September 2025, and for a portion it looked similar the woody would adjacent without a hitch. However, Novo Nordisk swooped successful with an unsolicited bid for up to $8.5bn astatine the tail-end of October, successful what Metsera called a “superior offer”.

Pfizer called the Danish drugmaker’s connection “reckless and unprecedented” and pointed to a usurpation of US antitrust laws. As portion of its retaliation, the large pharma institution filed lawsuits against Novo Nordisk, accusing the Danish drugmaker and Metsera of contractually breaching the merger agreement.