AbbVie looks to shed Allergan’s legacy women’s health unit as it hunkers down for Humira biosim doomsday — report – Endpoints News

With the clock tick­ing on its block­buster Hu­mi­ra patent in the US, Ab­b­Vie is re­port­ed­ly in talks to sell the $5 bil­lion women’s health port­fo­lio it ac­quired from Al­ler­gan in or­der to pay off debt and fo­cus on new ar­eas.

Un­named sources told Reuters  that Ab­b­Vie is work­ing with Mor­gan Stan­ley to auc­tion off the port­fo­lio, which in­cludes the Lo Loestrin Fe birth con­trol pill. The po­ten­tial sale has re­port­ed­ly at­tract­ed the likes of CVC Cap­i­tal Part­ners, which the sources say is eye­ing the unit for its port­fo­lio com­pa­ny, Ther­amex.

End­points News has reached out to Ab­b­Vie to con­firm the move and did not re­ceive a re­sponse by press time.

This won’t be the first time ex­ec­u­tives look to sell the unit. In 2018, then-Al­ler­gan CEO Brent Saun­ders laid out plans to of­fload the com­pa­ny’s women’s health and in­fec­tious dis­ease units. The fol­low­ing year, Saun­ders de­cid­ed to hold on to the women’s health unit — sev­er­al months be­fore Ab­b­Vie plunked down $63 bil­lion to buy out the com­pa­ny.

The deal gave Ab­b­Vie the Botox fran­chise and $16 bil­lion in an­nu­al rev­enue to work with ahead of los­ing US patent pro­tec­tion for Hu­mi­ra in 2023. The im­munol­o­gy megablock­buster pulled in $16.1 bil­lion in net sales last year alone. Since the buy­out, Ab­b­Vie has been steadi­ly shed­ding Al­ler­gan pipeline prod­ucts, with the main fo­cus on Botox.

Back in Au­gust, Ab­b­Vie bid adieu to the gene edit­ing work with Ed­i­tas it in­her­it­ed in the buy­out. And two months ear­li­er, it swept out a col­lab­o­ra­tion deal with As­sem­bly Bio­sciences.

Reuters re­port­ed that the women’s health port­fo­lio gen­er­ates a 12-month EBIT­DA of $500 mil­lion, and could be val­ued at 10 times that.