Speaking at a conference this morning, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla suggested that Metsera’s therapies could begin hitting the market in 2028.
The deal is done. Pfizer has officially closed the acquisition of obesity biotech darling Metsera for about $9.2 billion.
The hotly contested deal ultimately gave Metsera $7 billion upfront, plus about $2.2 billion in contingent value right payments. The CVRs are tied to three clinical and regulatory milestones, according to Pfizer’s Thursday release announcing the deal’s closure.
The press release did not mention the battle to secure the deal that erupted after Novo Nordisk tried to usurp the New York pharma’s September bid. But for more than a week, a bidding war drove up the price to Pfizer’s final offer. Pfizer won out because it was able to offer one thing Novo couldn’t: regulatory certainty. Analysts, and Metsera itself, concluded that Novo’s $10 billion offer would likely take about two years to clear regulatory review.
Speaking at the Yahoo Finance Invest conference this morning, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said his company was the right fit for Metsera.
“We are a company that knows how to run massive vaccine trials,” Bourla said. “We are a company that knows how to manufacture at scale.”
Bourla suggested that the therapies garnered from the Metsera acquisition, which include the GLP-1 receptor agonist MET-097 and the long-acting amylin analog MET-233 and other earlier assets, could begin hitting the market as soon as 2028.
A green banner linking to the Pfizer website was added Thursday to Metsera’s page, with parts of Metsera’s site being taken offline. The biotech is to operate as a subsidiary of Pfizer, according to the release.
