Pharma BD Deal Intelligence
Novo Nordisk acquired Emisphere Technologies (Nasdaq: EMIS) for $1.35 billion in cash (~$7.83/share on ~170.9M fully diluted shares; ~17% premium), completing December 8, 2020. Concurrently, Novo Nordisk paid a separate $450 million to affiliates of MHR Fund Management LLC to acquire the related Eligen/SNAC royalty-stream obligations — bringing total consideration to roughly $1.8 billion. The prize was Emisphere's proprietary Eligen oral drug-delivery technology (the SNAC absorption-enhancing carrier), already licensed by Novo Nordisk and used in the oral formulation of semaglutide (Rybelsus), the first oral GLP-1 receptor agonist. The buy-in eliminated future royalty leakage on a franchise whose oral semaglutide product reached DKK 23.3 billion (~$3.4B) in net sales by FY2024.