Medimmune buyout by Astra Zeneca

Astra Zeneca paied 11 times the sales of Medimmune for buying out a company with two major products, Flumist, a flu vaccine and Synagis, a respiratory infections treatment for kids. Paid too much? Sounds like it given that Serono just recently got bought out for 6 times its sales! They have about 30-35 products in the pipeline but buying a pipeline is more akin to buying a dream...its not real!

``That's a hell of a premium and it's going to take quite some time until they make some money on their investment,'' said Romain Pasche, who manages about $800 million in drug stocks at Vontobel Asset Management and holds AstraZeneca shares. ``Astra really needed to plug the gap they have in their late-date pipeline and this acquisition doesn't solve that problem.''

Others seem to agree! I am just surprised how quickly this concluded.