The Mayne Pharma Group Ltd (ASX: MYX) share price will be one to watch on Monday following the release of a positive update by the pharmaceutical company.
What did Mayne Pharma announce?
This morning Mayne Pharma announced that it has entered into a long-term supply agreement with Novast Laboratories for 13 U.S. generic oral contraceptive products. This includes five new products not previously marketed by the company.
Novast Laboratories is a pharmaceutical company based in Nantong, China. It develops and commercialises generic drugs for global markets. Novast has a significant number of products approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including hormone products and sustained-release oral dosage forms.
According to the release, four of the additional products are FDA approved and include generic equivalents of two of the highest prescribed oral contraceptive products in the United States.
These are Ortho Cyclen and Ortho Tricyclen, as well as Loestrin 24 FE and Desogen. The fifth new product included in the agreement is still pending review with the FDA.
Mayne Pharma's CEO, Scott Richards, commented: "We are very pleased to have partnered with Novast, who have an outstanding quality track record manufacturing and supplying oral contraceptives to the US market. This transaction expands our women's health portfolio and secures supply on more favourable terms of eight products previously acquired from Teva Pharmaceuticals to continue to drive growth of our women's health franchise."
What is the market opportunity?
The company notes that, according to IQVIA, the annual U.S. market sales for the five additional products were US$500 million, with more than 1.3 billion tablets sold annually.
This agreement has given Mayne Pharma's women's health portfolio a major boost in respect to its market opportunity.
Mr Richards said: "Mayne Pharma's women's health portfolio today includes 27 marketed and pipeline products, including a novel oral contraceptive E4/DRSP and two generic contraceptive products targeting markets with sales of US$1.2 billion and targeted to launch in FY21."
Finally, with the Mayne Pharma share price down 22% since the start of the year, shareholders will no doubt be hoping this is the catalyst to narrowing this decline and ultimately taking its shares higher for the year in the near future.
