Bill Marth, AMRI president and CEO, told participants at JP Morgan’s Healthcare Conference on Tuesday that the company’s recently announced acquisition of two Aptuit sites will offer the company a new look at European customers and should bring in between $25m-30m in new revenue for the year.
In addition, the company is looking to its global sites in Singapore, India and the UK to help pick up some of the slack from the loss of royalty revenue for discovering fexofenadine, which at its height brought in about $50m annually for the contract developer and manufacturer.
AMRI will also receive some help from the state of New York, which is planning a $1bn investment to help biopharma companies in the state, which will allow the company seven years of rent for $1 per year, and $40-50m in equipment that AMRI can pick and use for $1 a year, Marth added.
“The fundamental issue is growing contract revenue – need to replace royalties with contract revenue, which is not easy to do,” Marth said, especially as helping pharma with its discovery business “has its ebbs and flows.”
He added that acquisitions will be increasingly important for the company moving forward, especially as AMRI still has its sights set on becoming a $1bn company in the next five years.
In 2014 the company also began “a real initiative to grow the generic business,” Marth added, noting that “we won’t be able to produce tons of generic revenue, but we’re filing DMFs (drug master files) today,” and as 86% of US prescriptions are for generics, Marth added that he doesn’t “see any reason not to participate in that business.”
As for the company’s growing API manufacturing business, Marth said they will continue to focus on “high-value, niche APIs.”
He also pointed out that in the last couple of days AMRI has hired a new CFO, Felicia Ladin, who will replace Michael Nolan.