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Acceleron Investors Want Merck To Pay More, Ask Company To Wait For Better Offer

$11.5bn Acquisition Values Firm At A 34%-38% Premium

 
• By Mandy Jackson

Avoro Capital, Holocene Advisors and Darwin Global say that Acceleron should sell later for a higher price based on forthcoming data or Merck should raise its bid above $180 per share.

Hand turns a dice and changes the expression "bad deal" to "good deal"
Three investors said they will not sell their Acceleron shares to Merck • Source: Alamy

Three investment firms with significant holdings in Acceleron Pharma, Inc. have come forward to encourage the company’s other shareholders not to tender their shares in Merck & Co., Inc.’s $11.5bn deal to buy the company. Avoro Capital, Holocene Advisors and Darwin Global Management Limited say the acquisition’s $180-per-share price significantly undervalues Acceleron as it awaits Phase III data for its potentially disease-modifying pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) drug candidate sotatercept.

Merck highlighted sotatercept as a drug with blockbuster sales potential that could meaningfully expand the company’s cardiovascular disease portfolio, when the Acceleron acquisition was announced at the end of September. The big pharma based its assessment on data that Acceleron reported from the Phase II PULSAR trial last year

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