A little fresh speculation regarding some old talk about a possible GlaxoSmithKline takeover of Genmab inspired a spike in the Denmark developer's share price.
"The stock value is so low it makes sense for GSK to make an offer for the entire company," analyst Peter Aabo told Bloomberg. Aabo calculated that with a market price of $373 million, only twice the amount of cash on its books, Genmab partner GlaxoSmithKline could easily snap it up. The two companies are collaborating on the cancer drug zalutumumab, which could gain an approval in 2011 or 2012. And the quick calculus gained the attention of investors, who quickly bid up the share price by 32 percent.
Of course, it's all sheer speculation at this point. Glaxo, which already owns about 10 percent of the company, wouldn't douse the rumors. But Jyske Bank's Henrik Aagaard-Jensen wasn't buying it. "We don't believe that Glaxo would make a bid as they have partnership agreements with Genmab in place."
A week ago at ASCO Genmab offered up new data on zalutumumab's ability to improve progression free survival of patients with head and neck cancer. We are pleased that the data shows zalutumumab given as monotherapy can provide a clinically meaningful improvement in progression free survival for these very sick patients," said Genmab CEO Lisa N. Drakeman at the time.
- here's Genmab's release on the head and neck cancer data
- read the story from Bloomberg