Recipharm raises $32m to fund Nitin deal

Recipharm has raised SEK276m ($32m) to part finance the acquisition of a majority stake in Indian CMO Nitin Life Sciences that it announced in October.

The Swedish contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) raised the cash by issuing 2,250,000 Class B which attracted “a few well known institutional investors.”

Recipharm said the move would diversify its shareholder base and “raise capital in a time efficient manner to partly finance acquisition, previously announced during the fourth quarter 2015.”

The acquisition in question was the CMOs payment of INR 6712m ($103m) for a 74% holding in Nitin Lifesciences Limited - a sterile injectables manufacturing organisation headquartered at Karnal in Northern India.

At the time Recipharm executive vice president Mark Quick told us the investment in Nitin was designed to meet customer demand for high quality manufacturing in India.

The Nitin deal is part of the aggressive growth strategy Recipharma adopted when it went public in June 2014.

Since then the CMO has bought Italian firm Corvette and Portuguese contractor Lusomedicamenta.

It has also bought a plant in France from Flamel Technologies, invested in chemistry specialist Synthonics, acquired a stake in Pharmanest and is set to buy a manufacturing facility from Alcon.

The Nitin deal is still yet to close and so Recipharm has not started on integration, but CEO Thomas Eldered told this publication "the planning looks promising."

He added: "This raising was related to already announced acquisitions, including Indian Nitin but also the transaction with Alcon that was completed at year end. We continue to pursue our growth plan and we are certainly looking for further acquisition opportunities and indeed hope to close further transactions this year."