Sanofi-Aventis may seek another extension of its tender offer to acquire Genzyme, Christopher A. Viehbacher, chief executive of Sanofi-Aventis, a French drug maker, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Some analysts had predicted the companies would announce final terms of the off-and-on negotiations before Sanofi-Aventis’s 2010 earnings report on Wednesday. But they did not. The current offer of $69 a share, or $18.5 billion, expires on Tuesday.
“We are making good progress, and the evidence of that is, we’ve been able to sign a confidentiality agreement and are starting to share nonpublic information,” Mr. Viehbacher said in an interview with The New York Times. “But this is a company that’s present in 80 markets and has 14 manufacturing facilities, so getting through due diligence needs the appropriate amount of time to do that.”
Mr. Viehbacher said it was impossible to give a timetable.
“Feb. 15 is the deadline for the tender offer, and if we need to, we might extend that, though we haven’t decided to do that,” he said.
Sanofi-Aventis, based in Paris, has given two previous extensions to its offer to buy Genzyme, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech company with promising products for rare diseases.
Sanofi-Aventis was given access to detailed financial information the first week of February, advancing the negotiations that started last summer. Sanofi’s offer has been rejected by Genzyme as too low. It evolved into a hostile bid in October at $69 a share. Analysts are expecting a final deal in the low $70s.
Mr. Viehbacher, who has not seen any rival suitors emerge, said, “It’s actually impossible to give anybody a timetable on it because you’re not done till you’re done.”
Genzyme traded at $73.20 this noon, down about 1 percent on the day. Sanofi-Aventis also declined, by 1.5 percent to $34.44.
Sanofi-Aventis fourth-quarter earnings report Wednesday showed declining adjusted revenue and profit from the year-earlier quarter. The company projected earnings to fall 5 to 10 percent in 2011 because of generic competition and pricing pressure.