Probiotic pharmaceuticals: Kaneka launches €38 million takeover bid for AB-Biotics

12 Jul 2019 --- Chemical manufacturer Kaneka Europe Holding Company (Kaneka) is looking to pay out €38 million to buy the 60 percent of probiotic company AB-Biotics that it does not already own. Kaneka is offering €5 per share, which represents a premium of 19 percent on the average price over the last six months and nearly the same price as at the end of the last session when it was €4.98 per share. This means that AB-Biotics is now valued at €63 million – a steep increase from March 2018 when it was listed at €22 million, just before Kaneka was announced as a shareholder.

The takeover is voluntary and is expected to be amicable. Japan-based Kaneka is already the biggest AB-Biotics shareholder, with 40 percent of its capital. While the company does not yet possess the funding to support the takeover bid, it aims to develop and consolidate AB-Biotics within the Kaneka group through deep-rooted links between the two companies, as well as to fostering synergies through more efficient internal policies.

Kaneka also plans to delist AB-Biotics shares from trading on the Alternative Investment Market in Spain (MAB), where it has been listed since 2010. This is the first necessary step to avoid any conflict of interest, the company says.

Kaneka became the main AB-Biotics shareholder in March 2018, after acquiring 27 percent of the capital with an aim of boosting its presence in the USA, Canada and Japan. By June this year, Kaneka held 40 percent of the capital.

AB-Biotics is a University Autonoma of Barcelona spin-off company incorporated in 2004. Its probiotic strain portfolio is marketed in 66 markets by over 90 different pharmaceutical companies.

The probiotic market is increasingly lucrative, with MicroSintesis landing a US$12.4 million investment last month to scale up microbiome therapies. Additionally, research is growing to include prebiotics and postbiotics as digestive health becomes more mainstream.

Miquel Angel Bonachera and Sergi Audivert, Founders, Executive Directors and key shareholders of AB-Biotics, (each holding 9 percent of the company behind Kaneka), both support Kaneka’s bid. 

Edited by Katherine Durrell