Merus Labs rises as bought deal increases to $27.2-million

Shares of Merus Labs (TSX:MSL) are up today after the company announced that its current bought deal would be upped to $27.2-million, instead of the previously announced $22.1-million.

Yesterday, Merus announced that a syndicate of dealers co-led by Canaccord Genuity, Clarus and Cormark would buy purchase 13-million shares from the treasury of the company, at $1.70 per share. Today the company upped that number to 16-million. The company says it will use the proceeds for working capital and acquisitions.

Vancouver-based Merus Labs, which was founded in 2011, is a specialty pharma hopeful focused on commercializing mature assets in niche medical markets. The company’s lead product, marketed under the names Enablex and Emselex, is a prescription medicine used in adults to treat symptoms of overactive bladder. The product works by blocking the nerve signals that cause the bladder to involuntarily contract. Merus acquired the marketing rights to the product from from Novartis in July of last year. The company has two other products; Vancocin, a C.difficile treatment, and Factive, which treats chronic bronchitis and pneumonia.

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It’s already been a busy month for Merus. The company’s stock has shaken off a challenge from Apotex, Canada’s largest producer of generic drugs, which filed an abbreviated new drug submission with Health Canada, seeking market approval for a generic version of Enablex. This came in spite of the fact that Merus’s multiple patents on Enablex don’t expire until August of 2016. The stock has since and resumed an upward trend that began when it bottomed on May 14th of last year at $0.48.

At press time, shares of Merus Labs were up 16.3% to $2.07.

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