A general view of the Novo Nordisk headquarters building in Bagsvaerd
By Maggie Fick and Patrick Wingrove
(Reuters) -Novo Nordisk notched a win on Monday in its race to boost output of its popular obesity drug Wegovy, with its parent company announcing it was buying Catalent, a key manufacturing subcontractor of the product, for $16.5 billion.
Kasim Kutay, CEO of Novo Holdings, told Reuters the deal is core to his company’s strategy to support Novo Nordisk and enable the drugmaker to expand fill-finish capacity to meet soaring demand for Wegovy.
Novo Holdings, the investment arm of Novo’s controlling shareholder, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, will buy Catalent’s shares for $11.5 billion before including debt.
After the deal closes, Novo Holdings will sell three of Catalent’s fill-finish sites – in Anagni, Italy; Brussels, Belgium; and Bloomington, Indiana – onto Novo Nordisk for $11 billion. Novo Holdings owns 76.9% of the voting shares in the Wegovy maker.
That capacity is a “a key strategic consideration for Novo Nordisk particularly when (…) making sure there is broader rollout for Ozempic and Wegovy”, Kutay said.
Novo Nordisk’s shares rose 3.63% in Copenhagen, while Catalent’s shares rose as much as 10% to a more than nine-month high in New York.
Novo faces competition from U.S. rival Eli Lilly’s injection Zepbound in the fast-growing obesity drug race. Analysts have estimated the market could be worth as much as $100 billion by the end of the decade.
Runaway demand for the highly effective drugs has sent profits and share prices for both Novo and Lilly soaring. But a major hurdle for both companies is ramping up production.
A bottleneck for Novo has been the need to expand capacity to fill injection pens – a process known as fill-finish – that must be done under sterile conditions.
Catalent’s Belgian and U.S. sites already do fill-finish for Wegovy but will eventually stop producing drugs for other pharma companies.
That, along with the addition of the Italian factory, will help the drugmaker boost Wegovy output quicker than expected, JP Morgan analysts said in a note.
Greater control over its supply chain should allow Novo to avoid the manufacturing quality problems Catalent created for the company throughout 2022, said Nicholas Anderson, portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management.
Catalent’s Brussels plant repeatedly breached U.S. sterile-safety rules in 2021 and 2022 and staff failed to perform required quality checks, Reuters reported last year citing regulatory documents.
The deal is expected to complete towards the end of 2024, with Novo anticipating it will help increase its filling capacity from 2026.
ANTITRUST
The deal should not raise antitrust issues because the drugmaker is only buying three of the roughly 50 sites Catalent operates, according to a person familiar with the matter, who added that with only one in the United States, the U.S. watchdog for foreign investments should not be concerned.
The division of assets between the Danish drugmaker and its parent should ease worries that the deal will disadvantage Catalent’s other customers, the source said.
“Novo Nordisk will ensure an ordinary transition and will make sure that all the customers will continue to be taken care of,” the source said.
It was not immediately clear which other pharma clients might be affected by the sale to Novo.
Shares in Swiss rival contract manufacturer Lonza extended gains on the news, closing up 3.2%, while Thermo Fisher, which does fill-finish for Wegovy, was down 0.1% in New York
TUMULT
Monday’s announcement caps a tumultuous period for Catalent, which had been the target of takeover interest from both private equity firms and strategic buyers.
It follows a strategic review as part of a settlement with activist investor Elliott Investment Management in August after Catalent struggled with manufacturing problems including at the Brussels plant.
“When we saw that, we said: There may be an opportunity to do something here. That was the trigger,” said Kutay.
Buying the sites will have a low single-digit percentage negative impact on operating profit growth in 2024 and 2025, Novo Nordisk said.
Novo Holdings already owns a contract research organization called Altasciences and a contract manufacturer called RiteDose, both in the United States.
(Reporting by Leroy Leo and Bhanvi Satija in Bengaluru, Maggie Fick in London, and Patrick Wingrove in New York; Additional reporting by Carnevali, David in New York; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil, Shounak Dasgupta and Susan Fenton, Kirsten Donovan and Nick Zieminski)
