4-1 Report: Potential Alternative Buyers/Competitor Research


 

Overview

You are a business development manager for a life sciences organization in the Midwest that has recently found great success through their new cancer treatment drugs. You are part of the team that is planning your organization’s exit strategy, as the owners want to sell the business. As you continue to gather and analyze data to include in your strategic recommendations, you hear about a possible roadblock that can affect your plans.

There is currently one prospective buyer interested in acquiring your organization. Your team has started planning for the acquisition process based on this interest. However, you receive word that due to recent economic and market instability, the buyer is now reconsidering its acquisition proposal. If this buyer backs out, your organization will have to re-evaluate its strategy.

To ensure the organization’s readiness in case of a setback, the VP of business development wants you and your team to identify alternative scenarios and draft a contingency plan. Your team agrees with this approach and decides to perform some preliminary research that will not only help in your acquisition analysis but will also help identify alternative buyers in the event the current buyer backs out.

In this report, you will identify and research the top three organizations in your industry and market. You will then summarize this information in a report to your VP as the list of companies to consider if they decide to look for an alternative buyer.

Prompt

Create a report summarizing the competitor analysis for three of the best performing organizations in the life sciences industry, focusing on pharmaceuticals and medicines.

Specifically, you must address the following criteria:

  1. North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code: Identify the NAICS Code from the NAICS website for the organization (a life sciences firm producing cancer treatment drugs) in the course scenario. Make sure the NAICS code relates to either the oncology, pharmaceutical, or medicines sectors.

    1. How will you use the code to find potential buyers in your segment?
  2. Top competitors: Identify the top three organizations in the same industry with the same NAICS code as the organization in the course scenario and explain three criteria you used for shortlisting these companies. Use resources such as IBISWorld, Mergent ONLINE, and MarketLine to help you in your research. Consider the following in your response:

    1. Why did you select these three criteria?
    2. How do these three criteria impact the organization?
    3. What other criteria did you consider but not use? Why did you not use those criteria?
  3. Company information: Summarize the following information for the three competitors and potential alternative buyers. Use resources like investor relations pages on the organizations’ websites and MarketLine to help you in your research. (Consider using a table to capture this information.)

    1. Strategic vision (if available)
    2. Primary product(s) or service(s)
    3. Overall market share
    4. Compound annual growth rate (CAGR)

Guidelines for Submission

Submit a 3- to 4-page Word document using double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, and one-inch margins. Sources should be cited according to APA style.