The pharmaceutical company Endoceutics, of Quebec, manufacturer of the drug Intrarosa, the “female Viagra”, declared itself insolvent, placed itself under the protection of the Act respecting arrangements with creditors and could be sold.
Posted at 1:24 p.m.
An external controller, from the firm Enrst & Young, has been appointed and authorized by the court to solicit buyers or investors.
At the time of publishing, The Press could not reach Endoceutics CEO Dennis Turpin. Deputy director Olivier Roy said he could not add anything for the moment to the documents filed in court.
In a statement made in bankruptcy court in Quebec, Endoceutics notes that finding investors to recapitalize without restructuring would be very difficult, given the heavy accumulated debt.
The company sold its Mont-Saint-Hilaire plant, which employs 79 people, in order to assume its payments to its American creditor, CRG Capital, which has a secured debt of 61.7 million US dollars.
Endoceutics’ lead drug, Intrarosa, approved in 2016 in the United States, in Europe in 2018 and in Canada in 2019, is a treatment for dyspareunia, a major symptom of vaginal atrophy related to menopause.
Endoceutics expected sales of its drug Intrarosa to eventually reach “hundreds of millions of dollars” annually and took out a US$55 million loan in 2016-17, with an “aggressive” repayment schedule, may -we read in the motion filed in court and signed by the CEO of the company, Dennis Turpin.
But the pandemic has restricted access to doctors by pharmaceutical representatives and their patients around the world, preventing the marketing of the product and its prescription. Although Intrarosa is a medical success, it is currently a commercial flop, its acceptance by doctors being slow and slowed down by cheaper generic products.
Intrarosa’s sales have only reached 25 million in the past 12 months.
The death of the founder, the Dr Fernand Labrie, in January 2019, also contributed to the difficulties of Endoceutics.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article indicated that the Endoceutics plant in Mont-Saint-Hilaire had been sold to a manufacturing subcontractor. It was actually sold in 2020 to the real estate investment company Corum XL. The Press regret the mistake.