Allergan bets on rising popularity of botox for men

New York

FINE lines. Double chins. Sagging skin. Allergan Plc is betting that these byproducts of ageing are becoming an obsession for men.

After completing a deal valued at US$70.5 billion to buy the maker of Botox injections, Allergan announced on Wednesday that it would pay US$2.1 billion for Kythera Biopharmaceuticals Inc. The latest transaction gives the company an experimental drug for male-pattern baldness and an injection that is the only regulator-approved non-surgical treatment for a double chin - a condition that Kythera has said bothers men as much as women.

While women still supply most of the demand for cosmetic drugs, Allergan is betting that by marketing to men, it can squeeze more growth out of well-known drugs such as Botox and create new markets with treatments like Kythera's Kybella, for double chins.

Call it the "Brotox" strategy.

"We're starting to see signs of life about men being more open about talking to a doctor about ageing," Allergan chief executive officer Brent Saunders said in an interview before the Kythera deal was announced. He said that it would be a "home run" to get men to represent about 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the US facial aesthetic market, up from 13 per cent today.

Mr Saunders's company was known as Actavis Plc until this week, when it took the name of the Botox drugmaker that it acquired earlier this year. The old Allergan had US$2.23 billion in Botox sales last year.

The new Allergan has identified aesthetics as one of the categories it's targeting for acquisitions as it expands beyond its roots as a generic drugmaker, Mr Saunders said. It's part of the company's strategy of going after markets that haven't been big priorities for the traditional pharmaceutical industry, he said.

Not only is Mr Saunders the CEO - he's also a the type of client the company hopes to attract. At a meeting in California with Allergan sales representatives after the deal was struck, he got Botox injections on stage. He said on Wednesday on a conference call with analysts that he doesn't have plans to try out Kybella.

The number of men receiving Botox treatment more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2014, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. That was the fastest rate of growth among minimally invasive procedures for men, signalling a new receptiveness to getting that kind of work done. Still, the increase was less than half as fast as growth among women in the same period.

Men are more reluctant than women to make cosmetic changes to their faces, in part because of concerns they'll come out looking strange, said David Alessi, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, California.

"Men coming in are just normal dudes and they want to continue looking like normal dudes, just a little bit younger," he said.

That's enough to make guys like Akbar Tajani, a 37-year-old real estate professional working in New York City, shy away from aesthetic treatments. "There's the awkwardness after the surgery and how you wear it socially," he said.

Allergan plans to overcome those perceptions by starting to market Botox more directly to men. Its newest Botox commercial was the first to include a man.

"When you look over the last five years, with no focused promotional efforts, males continue to grow at the same rate as the female population," David Nicholson, head of research and development at Allergan, said in an interview.

The popularity of aesthetic drugs is likely to have a cascading effect as more men try them, said Scot Glasberg, a New York-based plastic surgeon. "Men coming into an office where they see other men sitting in waiting room, rather than a whole bunch of women, will probably make men a lot more comfortable," he said. BLOOMBERG