Cipher Pharmaceuticals Inc T.CPH

Takeover talks with Bausch Health?

[r0nald]

Arbitration award soon to be expected and Cipher still discussing an agreement with Bausch.
Could these talks be about a takeover I wonder?

As we know Cipher has told us (in september?) they were in the final stages of closing a distribution deal.
Nothing since.
Then in the Q3 call we were told they are working on a tax loss deal.
Nothing since.

Pretty sure any distribution deal or tax loss deal Cipher closes would be a pain in the #ss of Bausch if they have any takeover plans.
Bausch could distribute anything Cipher has in their portfolio and could probably find ways using Ciphers tax loss.

Bausch probably would have to pay big time when the arbitrator rules. And they know it.
Better buy Cipher for a known amount and get their business and tax loss too.

I'm really starting to think that talks with Bausch are the cause of (promised) Cipher deals not being closed yet.

So, lets talk numbers. $3? ;)

[Maxmoe]

Sounds like logical analysis to me but where does the $3 number come from.  Is it from Mars, some other planet, or is there a similarly logical pathway? I've rarely seen tax losses sell for anything much more than an icing on the cake freebie. Like 5% maybe. I guess if our pals in Ottawa jack up tax rates they may be worth a little more.

[Maxmoe]

So I dug a little and apparently there are more companies in Canada that could us those tax losses than I assumed other than Bausch so they better grab it while they can. There's a few privates that book actual profit and pay real taxes that could qualify, so you never know.

[Majictrader]

Happy New Year Max and the Cipher gang. We need someone with a booty of $50-$60 million minimum for takeover assuming $2-2.50 price range. So Bausch, Gud...who else?

[pabaloo]

With Activis/Teva failure to launch a generic Absorica makes a valuation really tough. Cipher can expect a 2 million Winfall with each month that passes by and it also gets Sun time to switch all new scripts to the Ld version so when a generic version comes out there are ZERO scripts of the old version to compete with. Docs are required to update there prescriptions to latest versions of these

[Maxmoe]

There are privates. Apparently apotex is not the only private drug co in Canada. It's so huge the tax losses probably don't matter and without Barry that company doesn't know what's up. But there are a few 10 to 50 million in sales private companies around

[PitchinPennies]

Either HLS (HLS.TO, $533M mkt cap) or Knight (GUD.TO, $700M mkt cap) could easily swallow  Cipher at the current level. Neither would really need the tax loss. Neither would ever pay a premium. I'd guess both HLS and Knight have already had exploratory discussions with Craig and left shaking their heads. 

[pabaloo]

Totally agree Craig has no interest in giving away the company at a discount. Good for him Bausch can suck his big toe if they think there garbage gets them an easy deal. Trulance is worth 25 million Cipher has 10 in it they can pay the premium or watch Cipher mismanage its sales with no sales force in place or coming. Laughable that they still have such a high market share for Epuris really