Morrisville-based Furiex (Nasdaq: FURX), which reportedly has put itself up for sale, on Tuesday said it lost nearly $30 million in 2012. However, that total is down more than $13 from 2012. The company pulled in $45 million in drug development milestone payments from its partners.
Bloomberg news reported on Feb. 20 that Furiex was looking for a possible buyer.
Not counting milestone payments, Furiex received $26 million in royalty payments from its products. That’s up from $20.5 million the previous year.
Citing unnamed “people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg said Furiex is looking for a buyer with help from Bank of America.
The report comes with Furiex stock having soared when Furiex successful trial results for a new irritable bowel treatment drug called eluxadoline.
Now that the medicine has met targets developed in conjunction with U.S. and European regulators, management believes there is less risk for buyers and has begun contacting other drugmakers to gauge their interest in a deal, said two of the people, who asked not to be named because the company’s plans are private.
Eshelman is chairman of the Furiex board and also owns 27.5 percent of the firm’s stock. The philanthropist, who has given millions to UNC-Chapel Hill, founded Wilmington-based PPD. That firm is now privately held. It spun out Furiex in 2010 before going private.
According to Furiex, Eshelman loaned the company $15 million at an interest rate of 9 percent. It is an interest-only payment loan for 12 months.
The proposed drug met key goals in two late-stage clinical trials, results that boosted the stock price of the Morrisville drug developer 129 percent on Feb. 4.
Furiex said the top-line results for the compound eluxadoline met efficacy and safety targets for treating diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS-d. The trial design and the study endpoints for eluxadoline were agreed upon by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well as the European Medicines Agency.
Furiex stock closed Tuesday at $93.23. It had reached as high as $121.87 in the wake of the drug development news.
The company plans to submit eluxadoline for regulatory approval in the second quarter.
Eshelman has estimated that annual sales of the drug would be $750 million to $1 billion.
This is the second time Furiex has tried to sell itself, according to two of the people familiar with the matter. The company unsuccessfully ran an auction process last year, they said.
