About Helen Torley
Helen Torley, CEO of Halozyme, discussed the company's intended acquisition of Evotec in a November 2024 interview on Bloomberg Technology. She described Halozyme as a San Diego-based biotech company with a drug delivery platform for subcutaneous injection, licensed to companies such as Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Janssen. Torley stated that the platform transforms intravenous therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases into short injections, which she said can reduce the need for hospital visits. She reported that Halozyme expected revenues of about $1 billion and $600 million in EBITDA for the year.
Torley characterized Evotec as a company involved in drug discovery and manufacturing using continuous manufacturing, which she said could deliver higher quality at lower cost. She noted that Evotec had faced recent headwinds and its stock had declined 59% over the year, but said that after conducting customer interviews, Halozyme believed those headwinds were past and that Evotec was "poised for growth." Torley said Halozyme had been working for two years to find an acquisition that met its criteria, and that Evotec fit in terms of revenue growth, pharmaceutical partner growth, and de-risked business. She added that the combined company would have over 500 partners and that growth would come from cross-selling platforms and attracting new partners.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Helen Torley's recent appearances.
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Transcript (9 segments)
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Interviewer0:10
Make it easier. Quicker.
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Helen Torley0:12
Yes, exactly. Thank you for having us here. Yes, we are a biotech company based in San Diego, and we have a drug delivery platform for subcutaneous drug delivery. We license it to leading companies like Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Janssen, and they can transform their intravenous therapies for cancer and autoimmune disease that generally has to be given in hour-long infusions in an infusion suite into a simple, short 3 to 5 minute subcutaneous injection under the skin. Often that means the patient doesn't have to travel to a big hospital for it. They can have it in the doctor's office or with some of our treatments even at home. And so you can imagine that it's transformative for the patient, for the caregiver who's having to do all the travel coordination. But it also saves the healthcare system.
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Interviewer1:10
Interest in using that cash to further accelerate our growth. So why therefore buy a company that does drug discovery, does drug manufacturing?
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Helen Torley1:18
Yeah, there's some core principles. You can imagine that our business is a licensing business. We go to the pharma companies and we license them our technology at the core. That's what Evotec does as well. It does it with drug discovery. So they have a mission to invent more effective medicines, but they'll do that with partners, same partners as us and even a larger number of partners. And they also have got manufacturing where they want to be the manufacturer using a new process that's called continuous manufacturing that will deliver higher quality, lower cost again, for those same partners. So by adding two additional divisions of strong revenue growth and EBIT contribution, you can imagine that's a good fit.
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Interviewer2:10
Evotec itself has been pretty beaten up over the year, down 59%. That's why private equity has been eyeing it. You're eyeing it. What do you think the market isn't getting? Because you've now explained that you're paying for it in cash. So it's not going to be a liquidation issue from an erosion of value from the share price perspective. What now do you need to convince investors of?
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Helen Torley2:29
Yeah, certainly there were some recent headwinds, but we think those are definitely past as we have conducted a lot of customer interviews to understand how Evotec's platforms are seen and how they're going to be used for the future. And so we see this as Evotec is poised for growth at this point in time. I think in talking to investors, and this is day two of us talking to investors, there's really beginning to be an appreciation for the unique combination that this would create.
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Interviewer3:14
It's interesting that the timing. Is this a moment that it's good to do M&A, cross-border M&A? Were you aware of the fact that people are thinking M&A is going to be easier in the next administration?
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Helen Torley3:25
I know we have been working for a couple of years actually to find the right acquisition to use our cash to return value to shareholders. This comes after months of research with, as I say, more than 50 customers of Evotec and consulting groups. We have been looking for the right combination and we have very strict criteria, and Evotec hits it in terms of growth of revenue, growth of either our pharmaceutical partners, de-risk businesses. It is just a terrific fit and we're excited.
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Interviewer4:13
People who hadn't worked with Evotec before. So that's where the growth will come both from within expansion but also new partners.
