After what Bavarian Nordic described as “intense negotiations,” the Danish vaccine maker has agreed to be acquired by a private equity consortium in a 19 billion krone ($3 billion) deal.
Bavarian said its board unanimously backs the “attractive proposal,” in which Nordic Capital and Permira intend to take the company private at 233 Danish kroner per share.
The deal will offer “ample capital and resources” to accelerate Bavarian’s growth strategy, including expanding the company’s commercial footprint and continuing dealmaking to diversify its portfolio, the buyer consortium has told Bavarian.
However, Denmark’s biggest pension fund, ATP, objects to the transaction, saying the price didn’t reflect the potential of Bavarian’s business, Bloomberg reports. With a stake above 10%, ATP is Bavarian Nordic’s largest shareholder.
“As a long-term investor in Bavarian Nordic, ATP has no interest in accepting the presented offer,” Claus Berner Moller, ATP’s VP of Danish equities, said in a statement to Fierce Pharma. “We support the company, which has very promising prospects for positive development under the current strategy. However, neither the timing nor the price of the presented offer reflects the opportunities we see in the company.”
Bavarian’s shares on Nasdaq Copenhagen have been trading above the 233-krone per-share mark mid-morning Monday, reaching as high as 242.4 kroner.
The 233-krone price tag also falls below analysts’ consensus target of 273 kroner for Bavarian in the next 12 months, according to Bloomberg.
Bavarian markets a portfolio of vaccines, including the smallpox and mpox shot Jynneos and newly FDA-approved chikungunya vaccine Vimkunya and others.
Sales at the company jumped 62% year on year to 1.35 billion kroner in the first quarter of 2025, even before Vimkunya’s commercialization. While the firm’s public preparedness revenue may fluctuate depending on the timing of contracts and deliveries, its travel health portfolio saw a 52% revenue increase, reaching 680 million kroner during the period.
Vaccines for rabies and tick-borne encephalitis were cited as the first quarter’s main growth driver. Bavarian got those two vaccines from GSK and obtained Vimkunya through a travel health business transaction with Emergent BioSolutions.
Bavarian’s board said it is unanimously recommending that investors accept Nordic and Permira’s offer “based on a thorough assessment,” taking into consideration two opinions dated July 28 from its financial advisors, Citi and Nordea.
The offer price represents a 21% premium compared with Bavarian’s closing price on Nasdaq Copenhagen on July 23. The company’s stock price had jumped last week following a Bloomberg report of potential deal talks.
“We respect ATP, they are an important shareholder,” Bavarian’s chairman Luc Debruyne told Bloomberg. “It’s ultimately up to the shareholders as a whole to agree. If there are better offers, it’s our responsibility as a board to try to get the best offer possible.”
Despite the growth opportunities ahead of Bavarian—including an emerging wave of chikungunya outbreaks the World Health Organization warns poses a global risk—the vaccines industry as a whole is facing great uncertainty in the U.S.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, has been rolling back immunization policies since taking office this year. He fired all members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee on immunizations in June. The new truncated panel last month recommended against the use of thimerosal in flu shots, following debunked theories that the preservative may cause autism.
Editor's Note: The story was updated with a statement from ATP's Claus Berner Moller.