Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals, the Chennai-based pharmaceutical player, on Thursday announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Karalex Pharma, LLC, a U.S.-based generic marketing and sales services company in an all-cash deal for an undisclosed amount. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this month and is subject to customary closing conditions.
Through the acquisition, Orchid has created its presence in the front-end US market and will be able to reach its generic products to the U.S. customers directly. The acquisition will add revenues of around $20 million to Orchid in the current year.
Headquartered in New Jersey, U.S., Karalex Pharma is a leading provider of generic pharmaceuticals focussed exclusively on the U.S. healthcare market. It was launched in 2007 as a pharmaceutical company committed to becoming a leading provider of marketing and sales services to US classes of trade for developers and manufacturers of generic pharmaceuticals. Karalex Pharma was founded by Nick DiMaio and Julie Trendowicz who have a collective experience of over 50 years in generic pharmaceutical sales and marketing. They have launched over 100 generic pharmaceutical products in the US with a combined value in excess of $1 billion.
“We are happy that we have established our presence in the generic sales and marketing area with this acquisition. This acquisition will provide a strong commercial U.S.-based sales capability to Orchid, paving the way for synergistic returns from our upcoming and long-term strategic generic pharmaceuticals pipeline comprising key first-to-file and Paragraph-IV products.
This move also endows Orchid, for the first time, with a complete end-to-end coverage capability of the entire generic pharmaceutical business cycle from product development to product sales and would enable Orchid to internalise value, said K. Raghavendra Rao, Managing Director, Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals.
