August 20, 2008 Omrix hoping rumours are true and J&J raises bid

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A report in the Israeli business journal, Globes, on Monday that Omrix has received a takeover offer from a US hedge fund at $25 per share, valuing the company at $430m, appears to have drawn a somewhat muted response from investors, with shares initially rising 4% but now trading at the same level as Friday’s close.

The fact the speculated premium in the hedge fund offer is only 13% and that Omrix’s shares have already risen a dramatic 82% since a two-year low of $12.19 in March, could explain the relative lack of excitement. Although Globes broke the Teva-to-buy-Barr deal last month, the question for Omrix shareholders is how seriously to take this rumour, and claims in the same report that the company recently rejected an offer from key partner Johnson & Johnson.

Unnamed sources

Citing unnamed sources, the report states that Omrix’s chief executive, Robert Taub, who also happens to be the group’s largest shareholder with a 16% stake, is considering the hedge fund offer, and is likely to send it on to J&J to see if the US med-tech giant will raise their initial bid.

If reports of these acquisition offers are true and Omrix is able to instigate a bidding war between the hedge fund and J&J, shareholders will be holding out and hoping for a much more substantial premium.

As seen with the recent opening bids by Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, for and ImClone Systems respectively, there seems to be an increasing trend for big pharma to offer meagre initial premiums, purely as a price to then negotiate from. If the hedge fund’s offer of a 13% premium is an improvement on J&J’s bid, then J&J looks set to continue this trend.

Rationale for J&J move

Given that , a medical device division of J&J, holds commercialisation rights to all Omrix’s tissue sealant products in the US and Europe, J&J realistically represents the company’s only likely suitor within the industry. Hence, attracting interest from a hedge fund to generate a bidding war could be a shrewd move by Mr Taub.

Given J&J’s knowledge of Omrix’s portfolio of surgical products and associated forecast revenues, alongside J&J’s largely successful history of acquiring companies to compliment or become new operating divisions, the rationale for an acquisition of Omrix is clear.

Underlying value

The rationale for either a hedge fund or J&J launching a bid now, in the belief that Omrix is currently undervalued, is supported by an assessment of the value of Omrix’s products using EvaluatePharma’s NPV Analyzer.

Omrix’s total NPV of all its products is currently estimated at $1.24bn, significantly ahead of its market capitalisation of $379m. While a discrepancy between NPV and market value is common for many biotechs with unproven drugs in development, the fact that 93% of Omrix’s total NPV is derived from products already on the market, with limited patent exposure, suggests the real value in Omrix may well be a lot higher than the current market valuation.

As such, Omrix’s market value of around $210m at its low in March may simply have been too tempting to resist for J&J, so reports of a bid from the pharma giant seem entirely plausible. This is highlighted by the fact just one of Omrix’s recently launched products, Evithrom, has an NPV of $201m.

Due to the still vague nature of these rumours, investors are unlikely to flood into the stock just yet, but current shareholders can be expected to stick around for a while to see if a firm bid from either the hedge fund or J&J materialises. More from Evaluate Vantage

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