Pfizer’s Zoetis raises $2.24 billion pricing IPO above range
2013-02-01 16:04:06
Zoetis Inc., the animal-health company owned by Pfizer (PFE) Inc., raised $2.24 billion in its initial public offering, pricing the shares above the marketed price range.
Zoetis sold 86.1 million shares at $26 each, according to a statement yesterday, after offering them for $22 to $25. Pfizer offered about 17 percent of Zoetis in the IPO, the biggest in the U.S. since Facebook Inc.’s last year. The price values Zoetis at $13 billion, making it the largest public company of its kind and one of the few focused solely on medicines for animals.
Zoetis is benefiting as people consume more protein, a trend likely to increase as wealth grows in emerging countries such as Brazil, China and India, said Marshall Gordon, of New York-based money manager ClearBridge Investments LLC. As meat consumption grows, so will spending on animal medicine for cows, pigs and poultry, he said.
“This is a play on global income growth -- as people rise in income, they eat more protein, and they have more companion animals,” Gordon said.
The shares will start trading today, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ZTS. The IPO was led by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley.
Zoetis, based in Madison, New Jersey, traces its roots back to 1952 as a Pfizer unit and has made at least 10 acquisitions to become the largest animal-health business, with $4.3 billion sales in 2012 -- about 20 percent of the $22 billion market.
Faster Growth
It competes mainly with non-listed units of companies such as Merck & Co., Sanofi and Eli Lilly & Co., according to Mark Schoenebaum, a New York-based analyst at ISI Group Inc.
While Zoetis’s 17 percent sales growth in 2011 outpaced all but Lilly’s animal unit, data compiled by Bloomberg show, Pfizer is parting with the company as part of Chief Executive Officer Ian Read’s strategy to concentrate on the drug business after losing patent protection for cholesterol pill Lipitor, the world’s best-selling medicine.
Pfizer sold its infant-nutrition business for $11.9 billion to Nestle SA last year. The drugmaker will likely use proceeds from divestitures for share buybacks, Read has said.
In August, Read announced plans for the IPO, replicating a successful strategy adopted by fellow drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. It completed a similar spinoff in 2009 of baby- formula maker Mead Johnson Nutrition Co. The stock has almost tripled since the offering.