Eye drug developer QLT Inc. (TSX:QLT) announced September 27 that it will buy back up to 3.4 million shares during the next year as part of a plan to return $100 million to shareholders.
The news comes on the heels of the September 24 announcement that QLT will sell its primary drug, Visudyne, to Valeant Pharmaceuticals Inc. (TSX:VRX) for $112.5 million.
Valeant agreed to pay $62.5 million to acquire U.S. rights to Visudyne and another $50 million for royalties from the drug outside the U.S.
QLT lists drugs such as QLT091001 synthetic retinoid and Latanoprost on its website as being products outside Visudyne that it develops, but Visudyne has been the company's core drug for the past decade.
The sale of Visudyne rights was not entirely unexpected.
QLT chopped 146 staff in July.
QLT then noted in financial statements filed in August that it had a "new corporate strategy and plans to restructure our operations in order to concentrate our resources on our clinical development programs related to our synthetic oral retinoid QLT09001, for the treatment of certain inherited retinal diseases."
QLT's sale of Visudyne rights is the second time in two months that a Vancouver biotechnology company has sold rights to its core product.
In August, Welichem Biotech Inc. sold rights to its psoriasis cream to GlaxoSmithKline Inc. for $230 million. That was the only drug that Welichem had focused on in recent years.
The result of the sale, Welichem CEO Liren Tang told Business in Vancouver, was that the company had to find a new focus and develop a business plan.[email protected]
