'We could sell this company any day we wanted, but we've no intention of doing that'
Galway’s Aerogen is plotting a path to being a €100 million-a-year company.
GALWAY’S AEROGEN COULD be a €100 million-a-year business in three years, but its owners aren’t looking to cash out any time soon.
One of several successful companies in the region’s med-tech cluster, the company makes nebulisers that allow medical staff to deliver drugs using an inhaler, rather than via the vascular system.
Recently filed accounts reveal the medical-device firm recorded revenue from ongoing operations of just under €40 million last year, for a profit of €9 million. It employs 120 people across offices in Ireland, the US and China.
Aerogen CEO John Power told Fora the company was “growing in all directions” from expanding its products’ applications into different parts of hospitals to opening up more territories.
“The company has continually, from 2008 onward, invested back in the business and we’ve scaled our manufacturing considerably so we can service the global markets. We’re selling now into 75 countries around the world,” he said.
While previously its devices were exclusively used in intensive-care units, the company’s nebulisers were now also on hand in emergency rooms – where the aim was to reduce the rate of hospital admissions, particularly for asthmatic patients.
A big bet
Power said Aerogen was also developing two of its own ‘combination’ products, in which it would sell the drugs – so-called ‘super-generics’ that it had access to – together with a tailored device for delivery.
“The drug-development programme products won’t be on the market for four years, they’re major investments in R&D,” he said.
“They have a potential market together of about half a billion. They’re big, but they’re a risk – we might fail in both. We’re prepared to bet that it will work.”
While it was recently reported Aerogen was considering an IPO, Power said it was “not something immediately on the horizon”.
The company, which Power founded in 1997, was first floated on the Nasdaq after a merger in 2000. It was later taken over by US bio-pharma firm Nektar before a management buyout in 2007.
Power said the company aimed to continue its 30% average yearly revenue growth, which would take it to €100 million in annual turnover within three years.
“My intent is to grow a great Irish company and that’s what I’m doing. We could sell this company any day we wanted, but we have no intention of doing that – we intend to back ourselves and grow the business organically.
“We might have been able to grow faster if we brought money in before now, but we quite like the idea of being able to determine the way the business goes without investors having the final say.”
