Dallas, Texas 01/17/2014 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) – Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY) at the ongoing JPMorgan Chase & Co. health-care conference in San Francisco has disclosed its strategy to grow its cancer related drug portfolio quickly. The $90.2 billion market capped firm has indicated that it will go in for quick acquisition of new drugs which are in development stage and have been designed to treat cancer, in spite of two previous failed attempts. The drug firm has also indicated that they would prefer to explore buying out development stage drugs, rather than go in for buying out drugs which have got FDA approval for commercialization.
Not Letting Past Failures To Slow Down New Buyouts
It is appropriate to note here that in the past three years Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY) had spent close to $7.8 billion towards acquiring Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Inhibitex Inc which failed to garner market share and there by caused huge loss to the drug maker. While Amylin Pharmaceuticals had a big diabetes drug pipeline, Inhibitex Inc had been working on developing cures for hepatitis C.
When it realized that the diabetes practice was struggling to scale up in real time thanks to negative findings by FDA in its target drug, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY) decided to sell the practice to its partner AstraZeneca Plc for $4.3 billion in November last year.
Risk Appetite Explained By Its CEO
Explaining the rationale behind this risky approach to build their drug pipeline, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY) Chief Financial Officer Charles Bancroft has been quoted to have said, “We have to take bets sometimes. A really good company shows they can be adaptable and flexible to the environment they find themselves in at any given time. Strategically, Inhibitex was worth it because of the large market for hepatitis C. The risk-on, risk-off was enormous if that could have worked. Unfortunately it didn’t.”