Pfizer acquires Biohaven for $11.6 billion in cash
Yahoo Finance Live’s Julie Hyman discusses reports that Pfizer will acquire biopharmaceutical company Biohaven in an all-cash deal.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: And then finally, as we're talking about pharmaceuticals, I want to talk about Pfizer this morning, and a little company called Biohaven Pharmaceutical holding as well. Pfizer shares are actually trading a little bit higher. It is going to be buying Biohaven for $11.6 billion in cash. Biohaven makes an approved treatment for migraines.
You can see the shares are surging some 72% here this morning. Weird coincidence this morning, I opened up my Twitter feed, got a promoted tweet about Nurtec, which is the migraine treatment that Biohaven makes. That was before the deal was announced. I don't know, but I guess the ads on Twitter were trying to tell me something.
These companies did agree back in November to collaborate on selling two drugs outside the US. So basically, Pfizer had already invested in Biohaven and now is acquiring the rest of it that it didn't already own. And by the way, this is Pfizer spending some of its hot vaccine cash, right?
It has a lot of cash on hand. And the company has said it is going to be spending some of it. It's doing part of that through buybacks. And this is also the second relatively sizable acquisition that is announced this year after Arena Pharmaceuticals. So we'll be watching to see if it is doing more of the same.
