Bristol-Myers Squibb said Tuesday it had agreed to acquire ZymoGenetics, the maker of a hepatitis C drug the companies were jointly developing, for $885 million.
The offer of $9.75 a share in cash was an 84 percent premium to ZymoGenetics’s closing stock price on Tuesday, and the company’s shares jumped 85 percent, to $9.80, in after-hours trading.
Bristol-Myers said the deal was likely to reduce its earnings by about 3 cents a share in 2010 and about 7 cents a share in 2011.
The companies entered into a $1.1 billion agreement in January 2009 to co-develop and share profits for ZymoGenetics’s hepatitis C drug PEG-interferon lambda. Bristol-Myers said the acquisition fit its goal of finding new treatments as its existing drugs faced generic competition.
