Pharmaceutical company Terapia Cluj-Napoca plans to expand its operations in the region through the acquisition of some medium-sized drug producers in Central and Eastern Europe.
"We are interested in making acquisitions particularly on those markets where our sales are already growing, such as Russia, Poland or Ukraine. On a market as competitive as the pharmaceutical one, you can only swallow other competitors or eventually be swallowed up yourself. Our plans are to create a pharmaceutical group,?" Stephen Stead, general manager of Terapia, told Ziarul Financiar.
The company may be the first Romanian drug maker to seal an acquisition deal outside Romania. Terapia representatives did not rule out possible acquisitions on the domestic market, either.
"We are looking for the next stage in the development of the company''s business, after the acquisition of Pharmaplant and Promedic, which took about a year and will translate into an expansion of the product portfolio. We will permanently need to add new products to our portfolio,?" Stead also said.
With regard to the company''s expansion policy, the Terapia manager gave the example of the evolution of generics producer Actavis from Iceland, which in the course of a number of years concluded successive acquisitions in Central and South-Eastern Europe, and now owns production facilities in Bulgaria, Malta, Turkey, the United States, Iceland and Serbia.
Terapia acquired two smaller pharmaceutical companies, Pharmaplant and Promedic, both from Bucharest, in a deal whose value has not been disclosed. The shareholders of the two companies were Romanian natural persons. In line with Stead''s estimations, the two companies will this year add about 7.5 million dollars (about 6 million euros) to Terapia''s sales, which will reach 80 million dollars, a total including distribution activities.
"The business environment on the generics production segment has improved recently. This has happened due to the authorities'' regulations, as well as following the expiry of patents for some original drugs,?" Stead explained.
In the first nine months of this year, Terapia logged total sales worth 55 million dollars (45.8 million euros), about 35% higher that the same period last year. Terapia''s representative dismissed market information referring to an imminent takeover of the company by a strategic investor as mere "rumours?". The company two weeks ago announced it planned to raise as much as 10 million euros from the sale of some land unused in production activities. With a total area of more than 10 hectares, the funds from the sale of the land, located in Cluj, are to be used for the payment of certain loans. alexandru.cerchez@zf.ro
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