Valeant Pharmaceuticals International is continuing its global shopping.
Earlier this month, the Aliso Viejo drug maker said it was buying an undisclosed Brazilian company for $28 million. Valeant is buying the Brazilian drug maker, which had sales of $19 million in 2009, to expand its generic and skin products, it said.
The name of the company being acquired was withheld out of safety concerns for the sellers in Brazil, where kidnapping is a problem, a Valeant spokeswoman said.
Valeant also is going to pay $28 million for a 165,000-square-foot plant near Sao Paulo that’s been approved to produce solid, semi-solid and liquid drugs, it said. That plant is set to allow Valeant to shut down what it called a “subscale” plant in Brazil, Chief Executive J. Michael Pearson said.
Valeant expects both of the deals to close in this year’s second quarter and to add to profits.
The company’s made several buys of companies here and abroad to boost its dermatology business.
It spent nearly $22 million in December for Canada’s Laboratoire Dr. Renaud, a maker of skin products sold in spas.
In September, it paid $69 million and issued 162,500 shares of its stock for Private Formula International Holdings Pty Ltd., an Australian maker of skin products sold without prescriptions.
In October, Valeant paid $18 million to buy the rights to several skin drugs made by a Polish company.
In the U.S., Valeant spent $285 million at the end of 2008 for Dow Pharmaceutical Sciences Inc., a Petaluma-based company that gave Valeant Acanya, an acne gel, and other drugs.
Valeant’s goal is to boost dermatology revenue to $500 million this year.
The company doesn’t specifically break out dermatology sales in its results. Valeant includes them in its specialty pharmaceuticals group, which made up half of the company’s $830.5 million in 2009 revenue.
Company officials have said having more skin drugs gives Valeant more money from patients who pay for products out of their own pockets.
William Tanner, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets LLC in New York, said he expects Valeant to make more deals in 2010.
But Tanner was a bit cautious about more deals. He projected Valeant’s earnings before interest, depreciation, taxes and amortization to come in at close to $360 million this year. But “the balance sheet does not offer unlimited flexibility for further acquisitions.”
Tanner also said three important Valeant drugs—Diastat, an epilepsy drug, migraine headache fighter Migranal and Efudex, which is used to treat skin lesions—will face generic competition this year. The company may have to come up with new formulations of the drugs “to sustain growth,” he said.
Device Maker Results
Vertos Medical Inc., an Aliso Viejo maker of devices to treat degenerative spinal disease, said a clinical study showed statistically and clinically significant improvement in pain and functional ability among patients treated with its minimally invasive procedure for treating a narrowing of the spinal cord.
Vertos conducted a study of its minimally invasive lumbar decompression procedure on 75 patients. The procedure is designed for patients who aren’t responding to pain medications and epidural steroid injections and aren’t candidates for more invasive surgeries.
The device maker already has received Food and Drug Administration approval for its procedure but has opted to further study its effects. Vertos has started to train doctors to support the procedure’s commercial launch.
Grubb Buys in New Orleans
A healthcare real estate unit of Santa Ana-based Grubb & Ellis Co. has spent about $11 million for a medical office building in New Orleans suburb Lacombe, La. Grubb & Ellis bought the building from CC Lacombe LLC.
Lacombe Medical Office Building has 34,000 square feet of space. Grubb & Ellis said in a release that the building is fully leased to five doctors who specialize in heart surgery.
The building is on the campus of Louisiana Medical Center and Heart Hospital, a facility that completed a $40 million, 120-bed, 109,000-square-foot patient tower last year.
Bits and Pieces:
Tenet Healthcare Corp. said Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, Los Alamitos Medical Center and Placentia-Linda Hospital were designated as “Blue Distinction” centers by local Blue Cross and Blue Shield health insurers. Fountain Valley received its designation for spinal surgery, while Los Alamitos and Placentia-Linda received it for knee and hip replacement surgeries … Clarient Inc., an Aliso Viejo-based cancer testing company, said data from a clinical study showed that its Ovotax test may effectively predict which ovarian cancer patients will respond favorably to chemotherapy with taxane, a type of drug that blocks cell growth … Healthcare Data Solutions, a Foothill Ranch-based compiler of doctor, pharmacy, dentist, nurse and hospital databases, said it opened a division that will use analytics to help uncover hidden customer information for its clients.
