PORTLAND, Maine — A British firm announced Tuesday that it will buy Putney, a Maine pet pharmaceutical startup, for $200 million. Jean Hoffman, who founded Putney in 2006, will leave the company.
The London-based Dechra Pharmaceuticals announced the acquisition agreement and sale price Tuesday.
“We haven’t actually closed the sale, so there’s still so much that we don’t know about what will happen,” Susan Hanley, a spokeswoman for Putney, said. “We do know that Jean will be leaving, and we do know that they’re really excited about the company.”
Beyond that, Hanley said, Dechra has not shared its plan for Putney or its downtown Portland office, which employs about 60 people.
The sale price is about four times the company’s revenue in 2015, of about $50 million, which was up from about $30 million one year before.
The sale will give Dechra a 100 percent stake in the company of which Hoffman held a minority stake before the sale. Hanley said the exit for Hoffman was planned as the company’s investor Safeguard Scientific Inc. had sought an eventual return on its investment of about $15 million since 2011.
Putney has the rights to market 11 generic drugs for pets and has another 10 in the pipeline that Dechra said complement its focus on drugs to treat pain, infectious diseases and dermatological conditions.
Dechra said Putney has accounted for about 40 percent of all generic pet drug approvals in the U.S. since 2012. It outsources manufacturing of those drugs and pays either a fee or shares profits of sales.
In a news release, Hoffman said she is “incredibly proud of the value that the Putney team has built.”
“Putney is the leader in pet generic drugs by any measure: revenues, pipeline, FDA approvals and market share,” Hoffman said.
Ian Page, CEO of Dechra, said the acquisition will help it grow in the U.S. and add to the list of drugs it has in the pipeline for approval.
Dechra and Putney said they expect the sale to close next month, pending regulatory approval.
Putney was listed multiple times in Inc. magazine’s list of the top 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the country, with revenue growing 183 percent from 2009 to 2012, to $19.2 million. The company grew revenue again more than two-fold in the three years from 2012 to 2015.
During her time as the company’s top executive, Hoffman won and was nominated for a range of awards, including being named in 2014 as the regional entrepreneur of the year for life sciences companies by Ernst & Young.