The latest big-ticket acquisition in the healthcare industry has closed. On Tuesday, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY -0.23%) announced that its buyout of heart medication specialist MyoKardia has been finalized; the latter company is now a fully owned subsidiary, with its stock being delisted from the Nasdaq.
The deal was first announced last month. Bristol Myers Squibb paid $13.1 billion in cash for its new asset. At the time of the announcement, that represented a rich 61% premium on MyoKardia's stock price.
MyoKardia's leading pipeline drug is the extremely promising mavacamten, which is intended to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a rare and potentially fatal disease that causes the heart to contract more forcefully than normal, leading to heart muscle thickening and impairing the left ventricle's functioning.
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Bristol Myers Squibb says that at the moment, roughly 160,000 to 200,000 individuals in the U.S. and the European Union have been diagnosed with symptomatic obstructive HCM.
According to the company, a New Drug Application for mavacamten should be submitted to the FDA in the first quarter of next year.
Bristol Myers Squibb clearly has high hopes for the drug, describing it as "a potential first-in-class cardiovascular medicine," for the treatment of HCM.
The cardiovascular segment is hot in healthcare just now, and MyoKardia is on the cutting edge of it -- hence its new owner's enthusiasm, and that generous buyout price.
Bristol Myers Squibb is also touting the deal's potential synergistic effects.
"With MyoKardia, we are bolstering our leading cardiovascular franchise and adding exceptional scientific capabilities, a potentially transformative new medicine with significant commercial potential and a promising pipeline of candidates," said CEO Giovanni Caforio.
Despite the company's obvious excitement, its stock was trading down by 0.3% late on Tuesday, though that was marginally better than the 0.5% decline of the S&P 500 index.
