INTERVIEW - ICN plans more acquisitions
May 8, 1998 12:34 PM
LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) - California-based drugs firm ICN Pharmaceuticals CIN plans to continue its rapid expansion with further acquisitions, company chairman and chief executive officer Milan Panic told Reuters in an interview.
"Our plans are to do additional acquisitions, specifically in Western Europe and the United States and to complete our plans for expansion in Eastern Europe," he said.
Panic, a former prime minister of Yugoslavia, has spearheaded a push into the company's stronghold of Eastern Europe. ICN had sales of $433 million in the region last year.
ICN has already pledged to invest $300 million in Russia over the next five years and has snapped up drugs firms in Poland and Romania as well as planning a new drugs factory in the Bosnian Serb republic.
Panic said drug licensing deals were also a core part of ICN's growth strategy.
"Goldman Sachs says we are the number one company for partnership choice in Eastern Europe as we are already the number one company there," Panic said.
ICN already has licensing agreements with Eli Lilley (LLY), Roche and Bristol Myers (BMY) and has also licensed one of its own major drugs to Schering Plough (SGP).
ICN received good news earlier this week on its hepatitis C compound drug as a panel of medical advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended its approval.
ICN has granted a licence to Schering Plough to sell the drug in all major world markets except in the European Union.
Panic quoted research by Goldman Sachs which he said estimates that for every 10,000 patients treated, $6 million in pre-tax income could be booked, of which 80 percent could flow to the bottom line, adding
around $3 over time to ICN's earnings per share.
But there is pressure to find the next blockbuster drug.
"We're in the final stages of a couple of drugs...but that's proprietary information to our company. But understanding that if we don't we are in trouble is really putting pressure on our scientists to come up with new products," Panic said.
He added that the areas ICN was concentrating on were cancer treatments as well as further utilisation of the company's anti-viral drugs.
(Valerie Darroch, London newsroom +44171 542 6762, fax 583 7239,
uk.emergingmarkets.news@reuters.com) |
