The deal is done. What happens next for Pfizer and Metsera—and Novo?
The battle is over, with Pfizer deemed the winner of a $10 billion prize: Metsera, and its pipeline of two obesity treatments.
The late Friday evening announcement capped a wild week in biopharma, which has for the most part been enduring a sleepy period of M&A activity over the past few years.
“No need for a reunion show: This seasons Real Housewives of Biopharma comes to a close with Pfizer’s winning bid for Metsera, following eight days of bidding, lawsuits, and a letter from the FTC,” quipped BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman in a Sunday evening note.
Pfizer initially agreed to buy Metsera in September, with that process proceeding as expected until Novo Nordisk made an unsolicited bid to snatch the obesity biotech out from under the New York pharma’s nose for $8.5 billion. A bidding war ensued and Pfizer sued.
Barbs were thrown from the White House—as Novo announced policy agreements with the administration from inside the Oval Office—and Pfizer was forced to dig deep.
Pfizer secured the win with an offer of security: analysts widely expected Novo to take as long as two years to close the deal—a timeline that Metsera noted itself in originally accepting Pfizer’s pitch in September. Novo’s offer even attracted scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, whereas Pfizer had already secured approval from the regulator. The last step would be a Metsera shareholders meeting this week.
Will There Be Bad Blood?
The final offer from Pfizer was $65.60 per share upfront, plus a contingent value right of $20.65. Leerink Partners valued the total at $10 billion, which was essentially a match of Novo’s final bid.
“Given the potential for Metsera’s portfolio of obesity/metabolic assets, we think the deal terms fairly values the assets and gives Pfizer a leg up in breaking into the lucrative market,” BMO’s Seigerman and colleagues wrote.
Metsera will fill a hole for Pfizer, which tried to develop a portfolio of obesity drugs internally, but which failed once they were brought to the clinic. Metsera brings two key assets, the GLP-1 receptor agonist MET-097 and the long-acting amylin analog MET-233. Both are aiming for monthly dosing, which would cut the burden for patients, among other advancements.
Pfizer now will have to integrate a company that it alleged in court filings had violated antitrust laws in pursuing Novo’s deal. Seigerman told BioSpace in an email last week that there shouldn’t be any bad blood, as Pfizer’s beef was squarely aimed at the board, rather than the executives and employees who run the day-to-day operations at Metsera.
Seigerman expects the deal to close shortly after the Thursday shareholder meeting.
After Metsera, Pfizer still has $3 billion in dry powder for more deals, but BMO would like the company to focus on execution of its pipeline as it stands, more than adding additional assets to the portfolio.
What Does Novo Do Now?
Though the company just lost a massive acquisition in a very public manner, Novo’s shares saw little pressure in pre-market trading on Monday. BMO expects Novo’s business development team to get right back on the horse—but would prefer a more traditional dealmaking process next time.
“From a Novo perspective, more deals are likely to come, but we want to also see more strategic change (less drama?),” Seigerman and colleagues wrote in their Sunday evening note. “We appreciate an aggressive approach to righting the ship, but management must act with some restraint.”
Novo has about $53 billion in deal capacity, BMO estimated. The company is also working to close the $5.3 billion acquisition of Akero Therapeutics.
Novo’s business development team could be on the lookout for de-risked advanced small molecule anti-obesity molecules. This is exactly what Pfizer earned with Metsera, but there are other companies lurking in the obesity field as well
For now, investors will likely shift focus to Novo’s upcoming Alzheimer’s disease readout for semaglutide. The Phase III EVOKE trial is set to read out by the end of the year. In other business, Novo will also meet this week to vote in a new board while gearing up to launch a pill version of weight loss blockbuster Wegovy.
BMO thinks the Pfizer, Novo and Metsera saga portends more dealmaking to come across the industry.
“If we learned one thing these past 10 days...M&A is only likely to continue, with interest in high-quality, differentiated assets is one of the key drivers of both Biotech and BioPharma in 2025/2026,” the analysts wrote.
