AbbVie to acquire ImmunoGen in $10B deal

Shares of ImmunoGen (IMGN), a biotechnology company focused on cancer treatments, surged Thursday afternoon on news that pharmaceutical giant AbbVie (ABBV) plans to acquire the company in a deal valued around $10 billion. Yahoo Finance's Diane King Hall and Josh Lipton break down the details of the deal.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video transcript

DIANE KING HALL: And finally, a pharmaceutical company we're watching. AbbVie is going to buy cancer biotech, ImmunoGen, which is seeing a big spike in the share price today. The acquisition said to be $10 billion. Shares of ImmunoGen up over 80% on the news. And interestingly enough, AbbVie has been ticking higher, a little bit higher, up 2%, which Josh, you and I have been in the business long enough to know that often, the buyer is usually-- gets a haircut on the day of an announcement like that.

So it's interesting to see not surprised to see ImmunoGen doing so well in terms of its share price. AbbVie, we know is trying to get a piece of the cancer treatment space with this deal. So that would give it just some-- I guess wiggle room in terms of just the issues that they're having in terms of the competition for HUMIRA, which has some competition from the generic space as well.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah. And I thought Bloomberg did an interesting job. Diana also just talking about the bigger, broader picture here, where drug makers demand for these kinds of treatments that attack cancer cells with I guess minimal damage to kind of surrounding healthy tissue. That's been in demand here. They know Pfizer's purchase of Seagen announced back in March. Same strategy. The team at BMO noting the trend, saying we see the deal as a positive for biotech as it reflects our view that quality oncology assets are of high interest to large pharma. And they argue they're at a premium.