'Exceptional year' for Irish-based pharma Jazz

IRELAND’S NEWEST listed pharmaceutical company has reported net profits of almost $125 million (€94.8 million) for last year.

New York-listed Jazz Pharmaceuticals relocated its corporate headquarters to Dublin as part of its $500 million all-stock takeover of Azur Pharma, which was formalised in January.

Full year sales were 57 per cent ahead of 2010 at $272.3 million.

Chairman Bruce Cozadd hailed an “exceptional year, as our targeted investments in Xyrem continue to yield strong volume growth”.

Xyrem is used to reduce excessive daytime sleepiness in patients with narcolepsy and to reduce attacks of a related condition, cataplexy, which weakens or paralyses muscles without warning.

Jazz’s other market product is Luvox CR, a treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder.

Sales of Xyrem were ahead at $233 million, a 64 increase year-on-year.

Separately, the company published selected figures for Azur for 2011. They show an increase in sales to $94.2 million, compared with $83.2 million a year previously.

Azur markets the chronic pain treatment Prialt, FazaClo, an antipsychotic for use in patients with severe schizophrenia, and women’s health products.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr Cozadd said the two companies were a good fit, with both going after the specialty pharma sector, with drugs that are sold through a small cohort of doctors that treat a serious disorder.

“If you are a small company with a focused audience, you are very competitive with any other company that goes after that audience,” he said.

“We announced at the beginning of the year that our aim was to find additional products to add to our portfolio that were a good fit, and when we came to Azur, we found not only good products but we saw a good management team. With this deal, we got both, adding five Azur executives to our team.”

From Azur’s perspective, having grown substantially over six years, it was struggling to jump to the next level in very tight credit markets. Jazz had $240 million in cash and, as a public company, wider access to capital.

Cozadd said Jazz was still in the market for further acquisitions, “but one of the reasons we hired a head of RD [Jeff Tobias last September] is that we do intend to invest in our own RD efforts.

“That won’t be discovering new molecules; it will be finishing clinical development and bringing things to market and the things we’re going to be interested in are products that would be a good fit with our commercial strategy – treating a disease where those patients see a specialist group of physicians.”

Shares in Jazz are trading at $51.90, valuing the combined business at $2.2 billion, roughly 10 per cent ahead of the deal price.

Explaining the decision to move corporate headquarters to Dublin, Cozadd says a key motivator was “hanging on to key people and key expertise, and setting up the company for future success”.