Novartis completes Alcon spin-off; looking for more acquisition targets

By PharmaCompass

2019-04-11

Impressions: 181 Article

Vas Narasimhan completed one year as CEO of Novartis AG, and it coincided with the announcement that the Swiss drug major has completed the spin-off of the Alcon eye care devices business through a dividend-in-kind distribution to holders of Novartis shares and ADRs (American Depositary Receipts).

“The successful execution of the Alcon spin-off allows Novartis to fully focus its capital allocation and management attention on medicines. The spin-off gives Novartis a financial profile closer to its pharmaceutical industry peers, including higher group margins,” a company statement said.

On the occasion of completing one year in the corner office, Narasimhan said in a LinkedIn post that Novartis is now better positioned “to reimagine medicine”.

Over the last one year, Narasimhan has orchestrated more than US$ 50 billion of deals, and plans to spend more than US$ 10 billion a year on acquisitions.

In an interview to Bloomberg, Narasimhan said Novartis is looking for more acquisition targets that would have a “transformative effect” on the company. Novartis aims to be “on the top of the next wave of innovations” and for that strategy to succeed, the company will “keep an eye on what will be the next big fields (of innovations),” he added.

To fulfill that vision, Narasimhan is hunting for partnerships in groundbreaking gene therapies. Last year was a good year for Novartis in terms of deal-making — it acquired gene therapy company AveXis for US$ 8.7 billion and Endocyte (a radiopharmaceuticals-focused company) for US$ 2.1 billion.

Additionally, it is also weighing the sales of Sandoz assets in Asia as the generic drugs business struggles to undergo a revamp scheduled over the next 18 months.

Currently, Novartis is gearing up for the FDA approval and US launch of AveXis’ lead product Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec), which is a gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

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