Bora Pharmaceuticals Co (保瑞藥業) has acquired six brand product licenses, rights and process technologies in the US for US$38.5 million, and expects them to start contributing to revenue in the fourth quarter of this year, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Bora’s board of directors approved the deal with Morristown, New Jersey-based Almatica Pharma Inc, as the Taiwanese firm moves into the brand product market to diversify risks away from generic drugs, the filing said.
The deal would enable Bora to leverage its sales platforms to enter the brand product market, it said.
Photo: CNA
Established in 2008, Almatica —a US subsidiary of Alvogen Group — focuses on the development, acquisition and commercialization of pharmaceutical products. Its product portfolio includes psychiatry, pain management, anti-infective and cardiovascular treatments, the company’s Web site says.
The six brand products are Zestril, Tenormin and Tenoretic for cardiovascular treatment, and Forfivo XL, Naprelan and Fluoxetine HCL for treating central nervous system issues, Bora said.
Sales of the six drugs in the US totaled about US$220 million last year, the company said, citing data from life sciences researcher Iqvia Institute.
As the deal was conducted through Bora’s subsidiary TWi Pharmaceuticals Inc (安成藥), it would greatly bolster the generic-drug unit’s product portfolio in the US market, while reducing its concentration on generic drugs, Bora chairman Bobby Sheng (盛保熙) told an investors’ conference in Taipei yesterday.
After TWi completes its takeover of the six products’ licenses and rights, it can deploy Bora group’s contract manufacturing and development expertise for mass production, which would not only increase TWi’s profit, but also boost the parent company’s global contract manufacturing business, Sheng said.
Bora’s second-quarter net profit surged 192 percent to NT$700.83 million (US$21.92 million) from NT$239.99 million in the same period last year. That translated into earnings per share (EPS) of NT$8.95, compared with NT$3.2 a year earlier.
EPS in the first half of the year was NT$22.54, up from NT$5.57 a year earlier, while gross margin improved to 46.09 percent, from 37.12 percent, it said.
With cumulative revenue in the first half of the year jumping 220.5 percent year-on-year to NT$7.92 billion and a better business outlook, the company yesterday raised its annual revenue growth forecast to between 30 and 35 percent, from its previous estimate of 20 to 30 percent.
It also raised its gross margin forecast to between 45 and 50 percent, from its earlier projection of 45 percent.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
POTENTIAL demand: Tesla’s chance of reclaiming its leadership in EVs seems uncertain, but breakthrough in full self-driving could help boost sales, an analyst said Chinese auto giant BYD Co (比亞迪) is poised to surpass Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV) company in annual sales. The two groups are expected to soon publish their final figures for this year, and based on sales data so far this year, there is almost no chance the US company led by CEO Elon Musk would retain its leadership position. As of the end of last month, BYD, which also produces hybrid vehicles, had sold 2.07 million EVs. Tesla, for its part, had sold 1.22 million by the end of September. Tesla’s September figures included a one-time boost in
RSS