What happened
Contract drug manufacturer Catalent (CTLT +0.00%) was surely tempted to reach for the aspirin bottle on Monday. The company's shares took a nearly 2% hit on the day (in contrast to the marginal 0.3% gain of the S&P 500 index) due to the apparent abandonment of a looming buyout deal.
So what
Bloomberg reported that morning that the conglomerate Danaher (DHR +0.50%) has dropped its pursuit of Catalent.
Citing "people familiar with the matter," the Bloomberg report said Danaher is no longer considering making a buyout offer despite its earlier expression of interest. The company had indicated it was willing to pay a considerable premium to Catalent's share price to effect such a deal.
The article's sources added that although Danaher has lost interest for the moment, it could circle back to a buyout later.
In what's probably not a coincidence, the report comes one trading day after Catalent divulged that it was experiencing cost and productivity issues that will hurt the company's revenue. The specialty healthcare company added that it likely won't recover the lost sales until the second half of calendar 2023.
Compounding that, Catalent announced that its chief financial officer, Thomas Castellano, had stepped down. He has been replaced on an interim basis by Ricky Hopson, who had been the company's division head for clinical development and supply.
NYSE: CTLT
Key Data Points
Now what
Neither Catalent nor Danaher has commented officially yet on the Bloomberg article, but that's to be expected. Parties in abandoned marriages, corporate and otherwise, are rarely willing to talk about their ultimately failed courtship. Most likely, Danaher is keeping an eye on its apparent onetime acquisition target to see if it can fix the problems that recently came to light.
