Gilead and Assembly Bio ink deal for antiviral drugs
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Shares of Assembly Biosciences (NASDAQ:ASMB) climbed ~137% pre-market Tuesday after the biotech announced a 12-year partnership with Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) to research and develop novel antiviral therapies.
Per the terms, Gilead (GILD) can obtain exclusive rights for each of Assembly Bioâs (ASMB) current and future programs, including two preclinical programs that the pharma giant is licensing to ASMB.
While the South San Francisco, California-based biopharma will be mainly responsible for their R&D work, Gilead (GILD) can take over their R&D, and commercialization if it opts to do so by paying at least $45M per program.
Under the partnership, Assembly Bio (ASMB) will be eligible to receive an $84.8M upfront payment and a $15.2M equity investment from Gilead (GILD), indicating a ~20% premium to the company stock.
Gilead (GILD) has also agreed to buy up to ~30% of Assembly Bioâs stock at a premium and pay up to ~$330M in potential regulatory and commercial milestones per program it selects.
Additionally, the deal provides ASMB with royalties ranging from high single digits to high teens and three separate $75M collaboration extension payments over the term of the agreement.
In conjunction with the announcement, GILD lowered its GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per share for 2023 by approximately $0.05â$0.07 to reflect the transactionâs impact on its financials.

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