Gedeon Richter has announced the acquisition of Finox Holding, a privately held Swiss biotech company focused on development and commercialization of innovative and cost effective products addressing female fertility. Gedeon Richter, headquartered in Budapest/Hungary, is a major pharmaceutical company in Central Eastern Europe, with an expanding direct presence in Western Europe.
Finox's product, BEMFOLA is a recombinant-human Follicle Stimulating Hormone (r-hFSH), which was developed as a biosimilar to GONAL-f, an established reference product. BEMFOLA was the first biosimilar r-hFSH launched in Europe. It is currently commercialized in the European Union, in Israel, in the Middle East and in Australia. The product gained significant market share since its initial introduction in Q2 2014.
Consequent to this acquisition, Richter will integrate the Finox team focusing on female fertility as part of its growing specialized Women's Healthcare business. Finox's senior management and commercial teams have extensive experience in women's reproductive medicine from leading international pharmaceutical companies.
Finox represents a unique opportunity for Richter to widen its core Women's Healthcare franchise and further emphasizes its commitment to biosimilar business. This acquisition allows Richter to establish its presence in the female fertility therapeutic area—a major growth market.
"Finox represents an important strategic opportunity for Richter in our core therapeutic area and will expand our Women's Healthcare portfolio. I look forward to working with the Finox team to further build on the success that they have made with BEMFOLA, which in turn is expected to provide an opportunity to further strengthen this specialty business segment in most of our key regions and even widen our geographic scope. I am convinced that the acquisition of Finox and the commercialization of BEMFOLA will create increasing value for our investors", said Erik Bogsch, managing director of Gedeon Richter.
"Finox is in a commercial expansion phase in Europe and is growing rapidly. The achievement of the company in launching BEMFOLA in more than 20 countries within 12 months and reaching double digit market share in many of them is unprecedented and I am aware of the investment that this requires. We are extremely pleased to have Richter to commercialize BEMFOLA as their existing portfolio and approach to specialty pharma is highly complementary, also they are considered as one of the leaders in the development and marketing of Women's healthcare products worldwide," said Dr. h.c. Willy Michel, the founder, chairman of the board and majority shareholder of Finox Holding.
The purchase price for the shares in Finox amounts to CHF190 million ($185.2 million).
