Samsung BioLogics, on Thursday, denied the media report that claimed the South Korean firm is in talks to buy U.S. drugmaker Biogen Inc

Biogen Inc. $BIIB: $240.00(-7.09%) for more than $40 billion.
“Samsung is at the negotiating table with the sell-side to acquire Biogen,” a senior official at a global investment bank told The Korea Economic Daily on Dec. 29.

U.S. biotech already has an established business relationship with South Korean chaebol. It is a partner in their joint venture called Samsung Bioepis that focuses on making low-cost biosimilars.

Samsung BioLogics, the biotech division of Samsung Group, said in a regulatory filing that the report was “not true,” not saying much on it.

Soon after the availability of the Samsung-Biogen deal report in the public domain on Wednesday, Biogen stock jumped as much as 13% and closed the day with an almost $38 billion market cap.

On the dashboard of Quantale, the social engagement for the Biogen stock amongst the users of Twitter and Reddit fell more than 40%, but the price of each share gained nearly 10% from the previous day close.

A total of 6.81 million shares of the stock exchanged hands, 5.53 million above the average of 1.28 million.

However, in the pre-trading session today, the Biogen stock slipped 6.5%, wiping off the earlier gains that an article from the South Korean business daily catapulted.

The stock opened the market at $245.19 apiece and was trading at a drop of about 8%, at $237.93 12:30 p.m eastern.

Biogen was founded in 1978 by two Nobel Prize laureates– Walter Gilbert and Phillip Sharp. Gilbert was honoured with the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in DNA sequencing in 1980, and co-founder Sharp received the prize for his contribution to his discovery of split genes in 1993.

The company is known to discover treatments for nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. Earlier this year, Biogen had to struggle to get its controversial Alzheimer’s medication approved. Despite the concerns raised by the doctors and researchers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration okayed the company’s Aduhelm drug for Alzheimer’s disease treatment. The drug’s sales in the third quarter were hardly $300,000, far below the expectations of $12.1 million sales.

In the previous week, the company announced that the cost of the therapy will be halved to $27,200 per year for a patient of average weight.

The stock skyrocketed to $468.55 apiece on June 7, taking Biogen’s market capitalization to about $69 billion following the approval of its Alzheimer’s drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Notably, after getting the nod from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its Alzheimer’s drug, the stock has fallen nearly 50% but remained in the positive territory overall in the year.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts based company generated $13.4 billion in revenues last year and finished 2020 with an employee headcount of 9,100.