On October 19, 2011, Abbott Laboratories announced its plan to separate into two publicly traded companies. The new Abbott Laboratories would specialize in diversified products including medical devices, diagnostic equipment and nutrition products, while AbbVie would operate as a research-based pharmaceutical manufacturer. The separation was effective January 1, 2013, and AbbVie was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange on January 2, 2013. According to Miles White, CEO at the time, the purpose of the split was to allow markets to value the two businesses separately; White said that investors would "benefit from two fundamentally different investment opportunities with distinct strategic profiles and business priorities." Some investors were concerned that the split was done to protect the value of the device business from the loss of value facing the drug division due to the imminent expiration of patents on Humira, which accounted for about half of the drug division's revenue. As of December 2015, the company employed in excess of 28,000 globally, and provided products to individuals in more than 170 countries. In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic developed into an international crisis, the Israeli government announced that it would force AbbVie to license its patents for Kaletra, the brand name of lopinavir/ritonavir, a fixed dose combination medication for the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS which was also thought to have some applicability to fighting COVID-19. In response, AbbVie announced that it would cease enforcing its patents on the drug entirely.
Acquisitions
In January 2014, the company acquired ImmuVen for an undisclosed sum. On September 3, 2014, AbbVie and Infinity Pharmaceuticals announced that they had entered into a global collaboration to develop and commercialize duvelisib, Infinity's PI3K inhibitor for the treatment of patients with cancer. On the same day, AbbVie and Calico announced that they had entered into a R&D collaboration intended to discover, develop and bring to market new therapies for patients with age-related diseases including neurodegeneration and cancer. Calico is an Alphabet Inc. subsidiary led by Arthur D. Levinson and Hal V. Barron that is focused on aging and age-related diseases. In October 2014, after a long negotiation, AbbVie stopped its efforts to acquire Shire, which would have been one of the largest M&A deals of that year and one of the largest tax inversions in history, due to changes in the US tax code by the US Treasury; AbbVie had to pay a $1.6 billion breakup fee. On March 4, 2015, AbbVie announced its agreement to acquire the oncology firm Pharmacyclics and its treatment for blood cancers, ibrutinib; AstraZeneca had also been bidding to acquire Pharmacyclics. Under the terms of the transaction, AbbVie agreed to pay $261.25 per share as a mix of cash and AbbVie equity. The acquisition valued at approximately $21 billion was completed on May 26, 2015. The Pharmacyclics name was retained, and it operates as a subsidiary of AbbVie from its previous Sunnyvale, California, headquarters. On June 3, 2015, AbbVie and Halozyme Therapeutics announced that they had entered into a global collaboration and licensing agreement to develop and commercialize products that combine AbbVie’s treatments and Halozyme’s ENHANZE drug-delivery technology, this was terminated in November 2016. On 28 April 2016, the company announced it would acquire Stemcentrx for up to $9.8 billion. A day later, the company announced an expansion of a two and a half-year-old cystic fibrosis deal with Galapagos, potentially doubling milestone payments to $600 million. On 25 June 2019, AbbVie announced it would acquire Irish-based Allergan plc for about $63 billion; however the transaction would not be structured as a tax inversion, and that post the transaction, AbbVie would remain legally domiciled in the U.S. for tax purposes. In July, the company announced it would acquire Mavupharma, boosting its cancer drug pipeline.
On February 10, 2016, AbbVie and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Synlogic announced a multi-year R&D collaboration. Synlogic is a synthetic biology company built on research from the labs of James Collins and Tim Lu at MIT. As part of the collaboration, AbbVie is getting worldwide rights to Synlogic’s probiotic-based technology for treating inflammatory bowel disease, and the research teams will focus on Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. In April 2016, the company partnered with the University of Chicago to investigate a number of areas of oncology: breast, lung, prostate, colorectal and hematological cancers. In the same month the company announced it would co-commercialize Argenx's preclinical immunotherapy, ARGX-115. ARGX-115 is a first-in-class immunotherapy targeting GARP, a membrane protein believed to enhance the immunosuppressive effects of T cells. The company also announced a deal to co-develop/commercialize at least one of CytomX Probody's conjugates against CD71. In March 2020, AbbVie announced plans to evaluate the Kaletra/Aluvia HIV medicine as possible Covid-19 treatment. The company entered into various partnerships with health authorities in different countries to investigate the efficacy of the medication. However, the first non-blinded, randomized trial found the drug not useful to treat severe COVID-19.
Products
According to the Wall Street Journal as of January 2016 ibrutinib, a specialty drug, cost US$116,600 to $155,400 a year wholesale in the United States. In spite of discounts and medical insurance, the prohibitive price causes some patients to not fill their prescriptions. AbbVie estimates global sales of the drug at $1 billion in 2016 and $5 billion in 2020. In 2018, it started litigation against NHS England in the Technology and Construction Court claiming that they breached procurement rules and had not treated the company fairly during what was described as "the single largest medicines procurement ever done by the NHS" when seeking suppliers for hepatitis C treatments. In 2019, a UK court dismissed AbbVie's case against the NHS. As of 2019, the company remained committed to product development in the cystic fibrosis disease area, despite major success by their main competitor in the area, Vertex.
