Novo Nordisk wants to buy more companies with drugs in early- to mid-stages of development through "bolt-on" deals of up to a few billion dollars, CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen told Reuters on Friday.
As the company's fortunes soar on demand for its popular weight-loss medicine Wegovy, Jorgensen said Novo sought to acquire companies working on medicines in the areas where it is already focused.
"So diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, the whole cardiometabolic space, but also in the rare blood disorders, haemophilia, sickle cell, we believe that we have a stronghold there," he said in an interview.
"We will continuously be looking at smaller bolt-ons, typically early stage, phase 1 and phase 2, projects and typically of a very modest number of a few billion dollars," he added.
Novo's M&A strategy focuses on disease or therapeutic areas where the company has a "deep biological understanding", and also on "a set of technologies" the company wants to leverage, he added. He cited "protein engineering," saying the company had done that for year.
The company's research and development (R&D) engine is intact and therefore it is unlikely to do transformative deals soon, Jorgensen said.
He spoke after the company announced it would invest around $6 billion in one of its Danish production facilities in the coming years.
Last month Novo said it had agreed to buy a drug for uncontrolled hypertension that could potentially be used in cardiovascular and kidney disease, from Singapore-headquartered biotech firm KBP Biosciences for up to $1.3 billion. It was the latest in a series of similarly-sized deals the company has done this year.
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