Acquisitions drive AMRI’s ambition to become a ‘billion dollar’ CDMO

09-Nov-2015 - Last updated on 11-Dec-2023 at 12:06 GMT

CEO William Marth says AMRI has taken one step closer to becoming a ‘billion dollar’ CDMO

AMRI attributed recent M&A activity to passing the $100m (€93m) quarterly sales milestone, reporting high double-digit growth across its API and small-scale manufacturing divisions.

William Marth, CEO of the contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), said AMRI “achieved a significant milestone” in the third quarter through contract sales of $101m, attributing the strong growth – 76% year-on-year – to acquisitions, combined with cost reduction initiatives.

AMRI’s active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) division grew 84% to $56m, driven by the addition of Spanish contractor Gadea Pharmaceutical Group in July.

Meanwhile, the firm’s Drug Discovery Services (DDS) division saw sales of $23m, up 35% from third quarter 2014, driven by an 81% increase in small-scale manufacturing thanks to the acquisition of Aptuit’s assets at the start of the year.

And for the firm’s Drug Product segment, sales jumped from $12m to $22m “reflecting the addition of [Aptuit’s aseptic facility in] Glasgow and higher revenues at our Burlington and Albuquerque facilities,” Marth told investors during a conference call last week.

“As we continue to build our business through organic business development and strategic acquisitions, we see our plan to have a billion dollar company is coming together,” Marth said.

“Outsourcing trends continue to expand and pharmas need to replenish pipelines and invest in early stage research is reinvigorating the discovery base and we continue to see lots of assets and capacity moving around. So the opportunities for us to extend our offerings through acquisitions remain very good.”

API business

Following the addition of Gadea, the firm has said it will be relocating and integrating its generic API development sector to Spain.

“Gadea’s fermentation capabilities will allow us to be vertically integrated on certain APIs where we will be able to realize some raw material savings and we’ll expand our opportunities for new APIs,” Marth said.

AMRI’s Chief Commercial Officer George Svokos added on the call there have already been successes in integrating Gadea with the legacy business.

“There were certain APIs that had been developed at Gadea - mainly permutation type APIs that were not steroids or hormones – which Gadea had no solution for, so they would have had to install some equipment to the manufacturing areas,” he said. “We decided to move them to existing manufacturing sites in the US.”