The roar from the health care sector has been loud and long. It was built on the innovations of many firms releasing positive results from their clinical trials, as well as acquisitions and partnerships within the sector. Halozyme Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: HALO) is keeping the rally alive with its most recent move.
The company announced a global collaboration and license agreement with AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV) to develop and commercialize products that combine proprietary AbbVie compounds with Halozyme’s Enhanze platform.
For some background on Enhanze, it is a drug delivery platform based on recombinant human hyaluronidase enzyme (rHuPH20), which has been shown to remove traditional limitations on the volume of biologics that can be delivered subcutaneously (just under the skin).
As per the agreement, Halozyme will initially receive a $23 million payment, followed by milestone payments that would total roughly $130 million for each of up to nine collaboration targets. Accordingly, these payments are subject to AbbVie’s achievement of specified development, regulatory and sales-based milestones. Additionally, AbbVie will pay Halozyme royalties if products under the collaboration are commercialized.
Other key pharmaceutical and biotech companies that are partnering with Halozyme include Roche, Pfizer, Janssen and Baxter.
Dr. Helen Torley, president and CEO of Halozyme, said:
We are pleased that AbbVie, a global leader in the development of novel therapeutics, has chosen Halozyme’s ENHANZE platform to augment their development pipeline. AbbVie joins a growing number of top pharmaceutical and biotech companies partnering with Halozyme to develop new formulations that will benefit patients worldwide.
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So far this year, Halozyme shares have gained about 86% to the current price level, and over the past 52 weeks the stock has grown 126%.
Shares of Halozyme were up 5.2% at $18.93 Wednesday’s morning. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $18.75 and a 52-week trading range of $7.51 to $19.03. It looks like shares could move even higher.
AbbVie shares were barely higher to $66.74, in a 52-week range of $51.37 to $70.76. The consensus price target is $73.23.
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