Contract Research Pharmaceutical Product Development to go private in $3.9 billion deal

Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) has agreed to be purchased by the private equity firms Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman in an all-cash transaction valued at $3.9 billion. On completion of the deal, heralded as a sign of things to come in the contract research sector, PPD will become a private company.

With sales last year of $1.5 billion, PPD is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical contract research organizations.

PPD, in recent years, has extended its scope to cover a broad range of drug discovery and development services. In 2009, for example, PPD acquired BioDuro, a California-based drug discovery services firm employing about 660 chemists and other research staff, mainly in Beijing.

Lauren Migliore, a stock analyst with Morningstar, tells C&EN that the breadth of services offered by PPD is part of what attracted the private investors. “Having early discovery through Phase IV services is one of the primary reasons why PPD has been so successful at winning new business and landing long-term strategic partnerships,” she says.

Migliore anticipates more deals in the contract research sector, where the last major player to be taken private, Quintiles, was acquired by its founder and a team of private investors in 2003. She says larger players like Covance, Parexel, and Charles River are poised for growth based on increased outsourcing by pharmaceutical firms, as well as market share gains at the expense of their smaller peers.