During the pandemic, the contract manufacturer built up large production capacities. The company is now looking for a new use for these – and is also considering selling them when looking for financiers.
(Photo: dpa)
Frankfurt The pharmaceutical contract manufacturer IDT Biologika is looking for new financiers. In the coronavirus pandemic, the company had manufactured Covid vaccines for Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Now the company wants to reorient itself and is examining options such as selling a minority or majority stake to an investor, as several people familiar with the matter told the Handelsblatt.
However, the project is still at an early stage, and the official process will not start for a few months at the earliest. Another possibility is the financing of the planned growth by the parent company Klocke, which among other things produces pharmaceutical packaging.
Klocke hired the investment bank Evercore as a consultant, according to financial circles. In a deal, the company could be valued at 15 times expected operating profit (Ebitda) of around €40 million. That would correspond to around 600 million euros.
“There has already been great interest in the IDT in the past, which is good recognition of our achievements. In general, it’s no secret that our company has already grown strongly in recent years and is still pursuing ambitious growth targets,” said company boss Jürgen Betzing, but declined to comment on the investor process, as did Bank Evercore. The parent company Klocke was initially unavailable.
During the coronavirus pandemic, IDT Biologika had been manufacturing Covid vaccines and announced plans to build Europe’s largest vaccine manufacturing capacity. In May 2022, IDT signed pandemic contracts with the federal government that run until 2029. The company announced last year that it would create 350 jobs and invest around 100 million euros in new bioreactors and high-speed filling lines.
Corona vaccines: After the pandemic, production facilities need new tasks
The pandemic is now over. The demand for Covid vaccines has collapsed, so the new production technology can no longer be used to the extent originally planned. In the fall, IDT announced the end of production of Covid vaccines for the French company Valneva.
“A crucial question for an investor will be which customers from the pharmaceutical industry could use the new systems in the future,” said a private equity manager involved in the purchase of IDT. Pharmaceutical contract manufacturers are a popular takeover target for financial investors. Last year, for example, private equity investor Astorg announced the purchase of the Heidelberg vaccine supplier Corden Pharma, which is said to have been valued at a good 2.5 billion euros.
After the reunification, IDT became a successful company
IDT was founded in Dessau in 1921 as the “Bacteriological Institute of the Anhalt Districts” to combat animal diseases. Today the company employs 1600 people. In 1990, after German reunification, the Klocke Group from Baden bought what was then known as Vaccine Plant Dessau-Tornau. Although the trust had previously classified it as “not capable of restructuring”, Klocke managed to convert the company to contract manufacturing of medicines and vaccines.
Among other things, IDT acquired the American competitor Aeras in 2015 and handed over the veterinary activities to the French Ceva Sante Animal in 2019. In 2020, IDT Biologika posted sales of 200 million euros, in 2021 it was around 250 million. IDT thus made up the majority of the turnover of the Klocke Group, which had sales of 379 and an Ebitda of 85 million in 2021.
In the future, IDT intends to focus on other areas such as cancer cell-dissolving (“oncolytic”) viruses. To this end, the company announced in spring a cooperation with the Swiss company CanVirex in the development of such so-called immuno-viro therapies. In the past, IDT Biologika had worked in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies on vaccines against tuberculosis, AIDS, malaria, dengue fever and Ebola, among others.
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