Sources inform ''Globes'' that Kamada Ltd. (TASE: KMDA) is conducting advanced negotiations with Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX), which include a possible sale of the company at a value of $150-200 million.
If a deal is reached, it will include two stages. The first stage will involve R&D cooperation, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, under which Baxter will obtain some rights to Kamada’s Alpha-1 Proteinase Inhibitor (API) for treating lung diseases. Baxter will have also an option to acquire Kamada as a whole. The sources said that a Baxter negotiating team recently visited Kamada to discuss specifics of a deal.
Kamada CEO David Tsur denied the report, saying that the company was not for sale. He added that the marketing rights for inhalable API, the company’s flagship product, would not be given to another company at least until more progress had been achieved in its development.
Kamada’s parties at interest include Tsur, Ralph Hahn, and Leon Recanati (both personally and through GlenRock Israel). The company has a market cap of NIS 446 million, after raising NIS 30 million at a company value of NIS 120 million in late 2005. The company develops drugs and medical ingredients on the basis of human plasma. The company’s API targets congenital emphysema and cystic fibrosis. Another drug is used to treat rabies.
Baxter is a pharmaceutical and medical devices company with a market cap of $38 billion. It both competes against most of Kamada’s products and sells active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to the company.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on July 9, 2007
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