Deal Reporter
Jazz Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:JAZZ) is looking at a number of possible acquisitions and believes opportunities can be found, COO Russell Cox said Wednesday.
In his prepared remarks at the Cantor Fitzgerald Inaugural Health Care conference, Cox noted that the company’s M&A efforts had accelerated significantly over the last few years, with six transactions made during this time. He said acquisitions were an important part of Jazz’s overall strategy and it would continue to focus on doing deals.
Later at the conference, the COO said Jazz saw opportunities for acquisitions, despite the current high pricing of assets.
“We have a subset of things that we’re looking at both in the public and private domain that we’re interested in, and we continue to believe that there are opportunities to be had for us,” he said.
In the Q&A session, hosting analyst Irina Rivkind Koffler asked how Jazz would maintain its disciplined approach to buys in frothy market conditions.
Cox said the company’s M&A screening process was different to that of many other businesses, with it also having a very efficient tax structure. He said Jazz looked at assets in a targeted physician group.
“I think we are very good at taking what I’d characterize as big pieces of small markets,” the COO continued. “We’re not a company that’s going to go take a small piece of the big market.”
The COO added that there were a lot of assets in the USD 100m to USD 500m range of interest in Europe and the US, with other companies potentially uninterested in targets below USD 500m.
He reiterated that while deals were “pricey,” Jazz continued to look carefully for buys that could make sense under certain circumstances.
“So we’re still bullish,” he concluded.
Jazz identifies, develops and commercializes products to address unmet medical needs. Its areas of focus are narcolepsy, oncology, pain and psychiatry.
The company has made three sizeable buys in the past few years, including the purchase of Italy-based biopharmaceutical company Gentium for USD 1bn, which closed in early 2014.
In the same year, Jazz acquired from Aerial Biopharma the rights to a late stage investigational compound for excessive daytime sleepiness, and bought Sigma-Tau’s rights to Defibrotide in the Americas. Jazz undertook a licencing agreement with Concert in 2013.
Jazz used Barclays for the Gentium deal, along with several law firms including Baker & McKenzie, Cooley and Ireland’s A&L Goodbody. All four advisors were also used on a previous sizeable purchase, according to the Mergermarket M&A database, while the three law firms were used with JPMorgan for the acquisition of Ireland-based Azur Pharma in 2011. Cooley was also used for the sale of six pharmaceutical products in 2012.
Jazz General Counsel Suzanne Hooper was a partner at Cooley from 1999 through to early 2012.
The company has a market capitalization of USD 10.6bn.