Sep. 2 at 10:32 PM
$VRDN Lily is acquiring a company with a similar research strategy as Veridian - Merida Biosciences - for a reported
$2.9B. Merida's lead candidate is in phase 1, meaning years away from the market and success is not guaranteed. Merida will be a financial burden for several years and one could probably correctly assume that Merida has a lot of debt used to keep it moving forward.
VRDN has an APPROVED drug in the market creating REVENUE, another less than a year way from probable APPROVAL, a robust pipeline, ZERO debt and
$800M or so in cash (which is deducted from its market cap when determining an acquisition cost). How much should that be worth to an acquirer? I venture to say at least twice (2.5-3X?) what was paid for Merida now and more when the next approval is granted.
