January 13, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
The retirement of MannKind Corporation ’s chief executive officer and founder Alfred Mann is unlikely to issue in a new era that is open to a merger with larger partner Sanofi , an analyst said this week, despite historically close ties between the two.
Speaking to Benzinga, Griffin Securities Analyst Keith Markey was bearish on a merger, saying late Monday that he doubted MannKind was looking to merge with Sanofi, but instead will keep busy bolstering its own business model.
“I think what they’re going to do next is actually build out their R&D pipeline,” he said.
Although shares of MannKind dropped 5 percent on Monday, Markey said he doubted the movement was focused on Mann’s retirement.
“Frankly, a 3 percent or even a 5 percent change in the value of the stock doesn’t mean anything. It changes that much every day practically, so I would say it’s not even worth talking about,” he said.
Biotech followers have been tittering about the noticeable snubbing of Mann during Sanofi’s presentation at the “Super Bowl of Biotech,” the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, on Monday, scant hours after MannKind said Mann will retire and be replaced as CEO by current President Hakan Edstrom.
Sanofi was expected to say at least a little something about Mann after betting $925 million on MannKind’s inhaled insulin device Afrezza last April and the close partnership that still exists between the two.
But Elias Zerhouni, Sanofi’s president of research and development, instead spent the majority of his talk hyping 18 drug launches expected in the next six years. Among those will be three new diabetes medicines—but no release date (or projected cost) for Afrezza itself, other than the device would be available sometime in 2015.
