Metabasis Closes Satellite Office in Michigan and Lays Off 35 People

In a move to preserve cash and reduce expenses, San Diego’s Metabasis (NASDAQ: MBRX) announced plans to close its facility in Ann Arbor, MI, and eliminate about 35 jobs there, almost a third of the company’s staff. After the cutbacks, the company will have about 90 employees.

The biotech, which is developing novel small molecule drugs for treating high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes, also noted two San Diego executives will leave the company as part of the cuts. They are Dr. Howard Foyt, vice president for clinical development, and Connie Bienfait, vice president for investor relations and corporate communications.

Metabasis CEO Paul Laikind called the cutbacks “a very difficult and disappointing necessity.” He says the company has adjusted its strategic objectives, including outsourcing some work to third parties. Metabasis also may pursue partnerships “on certain programs at an earlier stage of development than originally planned.”

Metabasis said most of the costs associated with the cutbacks would be recognized in the fourth quarter, and the company anticipates incurring restructuring charges of approximately $1.7 million. Most of that was associated with the layoffs.

The company disclosed the cutbacks as part of its third quarter financial results, which showed Metabasis has $32.8 million in available cash to fund its ongoing operations at the end of September. It didn’t say how long its cash will last, but it used about $10 million of those reserves to fund operations in the first nine months of the year.

We’ve updated the San Diego layoffs tracker with this news. The full list is here.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.