Here’s a question for consideration: What does it mean to acquire a virtual, single asset biotech that was ‘built’ for the sole purpose of being bought? The answer is much more complex than you might think.
In this post I’ll explain by peeking under the hood at The Medicines Co.’s recent acquisition of Annovation Biopharma, a small company founded to advance novel anesthetics invented at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2012, Atlas Ventures led an $8 million Series A round alongside Medco (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MDCO]]) and Partners Innovation Fund. In that round, Medco (which I work for) also bought an exclusive option to acquire the company on pre-negotiated terms. It exercised that option a few weeks ago.
Once the terms are all hammered out, this deal seems straightforward and fairly simple–Medco buys an option, waits for data, and pounces when the story comes together and all of the pre-defined metrics of success are met. The reality, however, is a bit more nuanced. There’s much more to “build-to-buy” biotech M&A than just simply ‘negotiate, wire money, and wait.’ These kinds of deals bring with them a unique set of challenges that are often overlooked.
The Simmer
Nurtured and supported by Atlas and led by CEO David Grayzel (an Atlas Partner), Annovation was an example of a single asset company that was “built for purpose”—an eventual acquisition by Medco. Atlas, like other firms, has done this type of deal a few times. Its team finds an interesting idea, shepherds it towards a clearly outlined proof-of-concept stage, and the buyer eventually exercises its option to buy the asset if all of the proof-of-concept criteria have been satisfied.
Atlas’ investment thesis here is simple and elegant, and this type of deal structure offers both parties a number of benefits. For Atlas, locking in a partner at the beginning helps reduce the financing and exit risk in these types of early-stage companies. For Medco, we get strategic proximity to a very interesting approach to drug development, a really talented team, and a small-company entrepreneurial culture with minimal capital at risk, low stress on our balance sheet, and at least early on, almost no impact on our human capital and management bandwidth. The end result is a de-risked asset that is served up warm and toasty for consumption by our mid-late stage clinical development, regulatory and market access expertise. Or, as they say… Maybe.
In my opinion, the single most important factor in realizing all of these latent and potential benefits is how the acquiring organization adapts over the course of the partnership. The big hurdle the buyer has to overcome is the, “but its not ours, we are just passive investors until proof-of-concept” mantra. This mindset leads to indefinite optimism on the part of the company, but no real specific ownership. Unless very careful attention is paid to how the rest of the organization begins its slow movement towards acquisition, all of the intended benefits of the deal structure may slowly dissipate and be lost. If the organization literally just waits for the data to come rolling in before everyone begins to suit up and try the program on for size and feel, most of the potential benefits baked into the investment thesis will most likely never be realized.
It’s important to appreciate the slow simmer aspect to all of this. This is a long process: for us, nearly four years from the first real discussions to the ultimate acquisition. Lots can and will happen in that time. For Medco, when we began discussions, our cardiovascular business unit was asymmetrically dominant. Our second, and much smaller business unit (surgery, the one that would eventually develop Annovation’s drug) had one U.S. commercial product with limited revenue and no pre-clinical or development stage assets. By the time we exercised our option on Annovation, Medco had acquired five other companies, built a third business unit in hospital infectious disease, and the surgery business was now competing for resources with a massive R&D enterprise that hadn’t existed just 18 months prior.
During all of this change, you have to keep making forward progress in aligning the organization to the value of the potential acquisition. Or else, when proof-of-concept data come in, there is no longer strategic support for the program and, little real alignment around the business case for the deal. In our case: New business unit, pockets of new executive leadership (five acquisitions!), and multiple project owners across much larger and dispersed geographic areas, none of whom had ever heard of Annovation or anesthesia. How do you solve this problem when the probabilities of failure for such early stage drug programs are high (see here for the sobering numbers) and available management bandwidth for getting involved in new projects is small? Is it really reasonable to spend any time at all having strategic discussions about a drug that isn’t ours and will in all probability fail?
A lot has been written about portfolio management of R&D projects, but for Medco, our approach fits our business model. We don’t have wet lab space. Instead, we have business development: our R&D is really a set of orbital shells of development and partnership programs almost exclusively derived outside of the company. We rely on the ‘search and develop’ (S&D) methodology to build our pipeline and drive our growth, and well-disciplined, strategically aligned business development is crucial for looking out the windows and finding the stories that we think are worth pursuing. For us, there are some broad brushstroke generalities that capture our thinking about portfolio management and integration of S&D projects:
• Traceability of the project back to strategy
• Capacity of the management and scientific teams to consume the external program and create a functional internal project, and;
• Applicability of the output ‘solution’ back to strategy (more on the solution thing below).
For Annovation, traceability was simple. It derives from our core company purpose and hit the big-ticket strategic priorities—we are in the hospital, we are in the acute care space, and we are in operating rooms. Check. Check. And check. It’s the other two concepts that can trip up a slow simmer M&A.
Capacity
In the end, any acquisition means finding the organizational and management space to take over the program. The real challenge for us during the slow waltz period of the partnership was to ensure that Medco advanced this capacity along the way. So, how do you do this? How do you spark managerial ignition, and minimize
