Eli Lilly to Buy Centessa Pharmaceuticals for Initial $6.3 Billion -- 2nd Update

By Colin Kellaher

Eli Lilly has agreed to buy clinical-stage company Centessa Pharmaceuticals for an initial payment of about $6.3 billion in a deal that expands the drugmaker's neuroscience portfolio and capabilities into sleep medicine.

Eli Lilly on Tuesday said it will pay an initial $38 a share in cash for Centessa, a 38% premium to Monday's closing price of $27.58 for the U.K.-based company.

Centessa investors will also receive nontransferrable contingent value rights worth up to an additional $9 a share, bringing the total potential deal consideration to about $7.8 billion, or $47 a share.

The deal is slated to close in the third quarter.

Shares of Centessa were recently up 49% to $40.95 in premarket trading.

Centessa is developing a new class of drugs for the treatment of excessive daytime sleepiness and other neurological conditions, and its lead product candidate, cleminorexton, has shown a potential best-in-class profile in Phase 2a studies in narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia, Eli Lilly said.

The Indianapolis drugmaker said the contingent value rights are tied to future Food and Drug Administration approvals of cleminorexton and Centessa's ORX142 drug candidate.

The Centessa acquisition extends a spate of dealmaking by Eli Lilly, which last month agreed to buy genetic-medicine biotechnology company Orna Therapeutics for up to $2.4 billion and in January said it would shell out about $1.2 billion for biotech Ventyx Biosciences.

Write to Colin Kellaher at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

03-31-26 0800ET