The transaction, which sources say could be agreed upon as soon as Monday, would price SpringWorks at $47 per share, totaling approximately $3.5 billion for the acquisition.
Germany’s Merck KGaA is in advanced talks with SpringWorks Therapeutics for an acquisition that could be valued at about $3.5 billion, according to several media reports on Thursday.
Confirming the news to The Wall Street Journal, Merck KGgA revealed that while no formal, legally binding arrangement has yet been reached, the companies are considering a purchase price of around $47 per share of SpringWorks. If all goes smoothly from here, the parties could reach an agreement as soon as Monday, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
SpringWorks share prices jumped 9% Thursday after the news reports.
Rumors of the courtship between Merck KGaA and SpringWorks first broke in February, with anonymous sources telling Reuters at the time that the parties could reach an agreement in weeks’ time. Merck KGaA confirmed the talks, sending SpringWorks’ stocks surging some 30% in reaction, even as the German pharma insisted that “there is no certainty that any transaction will materialize.”
But when a deal didn’t materialize, investor interest in SpringWorks waned. Earlier this month, the cancer-focused biotech had dropped roughly 40% from its high in February.
Since the first buyout rumors swirled, SpringWorks has become a more valuable prospect for potential buyers, winning FDA approval for Gomekli, its oral drug for neurofibromatosis type 1 with symptomatic plexiform neurofibromas.
If the acquisition deal pushes through, Merck KGaA will inherit SpringWorks’ Ogsiveo, indicated for adults with progressing desmoid tumors. Last year, Ogsiveo pulled in $172 million for the company in the U.S alone. SpringWorks is also studying Ogsiveo in other rare cancers, including ovarian granulosa cell tumors and relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.
The SpringWorks deal could help Merck KGaA rebound after a series of clinical setbacks. In April 2023, its BTK blocker evobrutinib was hit with a partial clinical hold from the FDA after the regulator detected cases of liver injury in a Phase III trial. Later that year, in December, Merck KGaA announced that evobrutinib had failed two Phase III studies in relapsing multiple sclerosis, unable to significantly reduce yearly relapse rates versus Sanofi’s Aubagio.
Merck KGaA was forced to terminate evobrutinib’s multiple sclerosis run in March 2024.
Then, in June 2024, the company also axed a couple of trials of xevinapant after the drug candidate failed to significantly improve survival in patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer.
Amid these failures, Merck in April 2024 attempted to buttress its cancer pipeline with a potential $1.4 billion discovery and development deal with Texas biotech Caris Life Sciences, focused on antibody-drug conjugates for oncology targets.
