Support 100% Independent Research With Our 7-Day Free Trial
BioMarin Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ:BMRN) just made its boldest move in years—unveiling a $4.8 billion all-cash acquisition of Amicus Therapeutics. The move, announced in December 2025, marks BioMarin’s second major buyout of the year and is set to close in Q2 2026. The company will fund the transaction through $3.7 billion in nonconvertible debt and existing cash on hand. The motivation? A strategic expansion into Fabry and Pompe disease treatments, two rare but underpenetrated markets, with Amicus’s Galafold and Pompe therapies contributing nearly $600 million in revenue over the past year.
Coming at a time when BioMarin is also sunsetting its gene therapy program ROCTAVIAN, this deal looks like a redirection of both capital and focus. Management promises immediate revenue accretion, stronger cash flows, and access to faster-growing portfolios. But beneath the surface, the BioMarin Amicus acquisition reflects more than just financial mechanics—it’s about synergy, global scale, and risk mitigation. Let’s unpack the four big drivers behind this deal.
Complementary Portfolios & Shared Rare Disease DNA
This deal is not just about adding revenue. It’s about alignment.
BioMarin and Amicus are both focused squarely on rare, genetically defined conditions. Galafold (Fabry) and Pompe therapies dovetail seamlessly with BioMarin’s legacy enzyme therapy portfolio, which includes Aldurazyme, Naglazyme, and Vimizim. With its Skeletal Conditions unit anchored by VOXZOGO for achondroplasia, BioMarin is already in deep with complex, low-prevalence disorders. The BioMarin Amicus acquisition boosts its share in lysosomal storage diseases and adds two differentiated treatments with real-world traction.
Importantly, the acquisition avoids overlap. Galafold is the only oral therapy for amenable Fabry mutations, while Pompe’s unique combination of ERT plus stabilizer differentiates it from Sanofi’s more established but aging incumbents. That means minimal cannibalization and clear commercial lanes.
Amicus is already profitable on a non-GAAP basis, and the merger offers BioMarin immediate accretion to EPS and free cash flow. For BioMarin, this is about extending its dominance in a niche where it already knows how to find, diagnose, and serve patients.
Global Footprint Expansion With Cross-Selling Firepower
Let’s talk scale.
BioMarin operates in over 80 countries. Amicus? Just 40-plus for Galafold and only 15 reimbursed markets for Pompe. That leaves wide open territory. With an expanded sales and medical affairs team, BioMarin can plug Amicus’s products into existing channels in Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East with minimal incremental spend.
Historically, BioMarin has been strong at launching therapies in complex markets—often where reimbursement, specialty logistics, and physician education are tricky. It built that muscle over 20 years. Galafold and Pompe therapies will now benefit from this machinery, allowing BioMarin to deepen penetration in existing geographies while opening new ones.
The company has also been clear: this deal isn’t just additive. It’s about optimizing patient reach. Management believes Fabry and Pompe remain significantly underdiagnosed. Their plan includes expanding genetic testing access, standardizing diagnostic pathways, and targeting switch patients from older ERTs. In short, it’s a global land grab—with the tools to execute.
Financial Accretion & Portfolio Diversification
On paper, BioMarin is paying up. But scratch a little deeper, and the financial logic holds up well.
With ~$600 million in trailing revenue from Amicus, and both Galafold and Pompe growing faster than BioMarin’s base portfolio, the BioMarin Amicus acquisition should bump top-line growth in 2026 and beyond. BioMarin expects the deal to be accretive to non-GAAP EPS within 12 months and “substantially accretive” by 2027, thanks to cost synergies and amortization leverage.
Importantly, this also diversifies revenue. As of 2025, VOXZOGO was generating close to $900M and over 75% of that outside the U.S.—but its long-term outlook is clouded by potential competition from TransCon CNP and others. Meanwhile, ROCTAVIAN is being divested after a slow ramp and commercial setbacks.
This deal offsets that uncertainty. It gives BioMarin another ~$1.2 billion peak revenue potential (combined from Galafold and Pompe), smoother global cash flow, and a buffer against overreliance on a single product. That’s critical in rare disease, where pipeline volatility is high and payer pushback is always a risk.
Operational Synergies Without Distraction
Integration risk is real—but here, it’s lower than you’d think.
Unlike many biotech mergers that involve overlapping pipelines or messy platform consolidation, the BioMarin Amicus acquisition is what management calls “plug-and-play.” BioMarin plans to maintain and build on Amicus’s current commercial structure, while gradually folding in manufacturing and regulatory functions.
There’s even a pathway to meaningful cost savings—though the company hasn’t detailed targets. Potential levers include shared medical affairs, harmonized global distribution, and the centralization of back-end systems. BioMarin’s long-standing facilities in the U.S. and Ireland also offer a potential roadmap for Pompe manufacturing, which Amicus is currently transitioning from WuXi to Ireland.
And culturally? Both companies are mission-driven and patient-centric. That matters. BioMarin’s CEO Alexander Hardy made it clear: the priority is to maintain growth momentum, not force synergies that compromise care. With Galafold protected by IP settlements through 2037 and Pompe still early in its ramp, the company has time—and the cash flow—to get this right.
Final Thoughts: Strategic Move, But Not Without Tradeoffs
The BioMarin Amicus acquisition looks like a classic scale-and-synergy play—except it’s happening in rare disease biotech, where the economics are anything but typical.
On the plus side, the deal boosts growth, diversifies revenue, and aligns with BioMarin’s deep expertise in enzyme therapies. It adds global firepower to two underpenetrated franchises and offers credible upside to earnings and free cash flow. Yet there are risks. The $3.7 billion in debt adds leverage to the balance sheet, pushing gross leverage to 3.0–3.5x at close. And while peak sales potential is exciting, both Galafold and Pompe will need continued evidence generation to win long-term mindshare against competitors like Sanofi.
From a valuation lens, BioMarin isn’t exactly cheap. As of mid-December 2025, it trades at 11.24x NTM EBITDA and 12.80x NTM P/E, up from just 10.01x and 12.45x, respectively, at mid-year. Trailing LTM metrics are even steeper, at 15.38x EV/EBITDA and 22.76x P/E, reflecting renewed investor optimism. The market appears to be pricing in a smooth integration and upside from the deal—leaving little room for error.
In the end, whether the BioMarin Amicus acquisition delivers on its promise will come down to execution, real-world data, and timing. But for now, it’s a bet on scale, specialization, and strategic timing—and a high-stakes one at that.
Disclaimer: We do not hold any positions in the above stock(s). Read our full disclaimer here.
