New twist in the Carmat case: the manufacturer of the artificial heart, short of money, has been given a reprieve to relaunch a call for tenders in which the buyer whose proposal was rejected at the end of September wishes to participate again.
The Versailles economic court decided on Tuesday to postpone until November 25 the examination of the request for judicial liquidation of the company placed in receivership since July 1.
Carmat's artificial heart is intended for patients suffering from end-stage heart failure while awaiting an available human heart for transplantation.
This new postponement was decided because "a new call for tenders will be launched", with "the hope of having a concrete offer submitted by that date", the company's CEO, Stéphane Piat, who has never stopped believing in a possible recovery, told AFP.
"It was considered at one point that liquidation would be declared today. This is not the case," Carmat chairman Pierre Bastid confirmed to AFP after the hearing.
“I convinced the court that there were good reasons not to declare the company bankrupt today, but that doesn’t mean it’s a done deal,” he emphasized. He will present “a new takeover proposal” alongside other investors.
– 122 hearts implanted –
At an initial hearing on August 19, the court granted him an extension to finalize the offer. However, the offer – the only one submitted so far – was deemed invalid at the end of September, as Mr. Bastid had failed to raise the necessary funds in time to meet the commitments of his takeover plan.
Pierre Bastid had entered Carmat's capital in 2016, during a capital increase in which two historical shareholders of the company, Airbus and the Truffle Capital fund, had also taken part, but have since left.
He and other potentially interested investors have six weeks to present a takeover plan for Carmat, which was founded in 2008 and takes its name from the early collaboration between its medical inventor, Professor Alain Carpentier, and engineers from Matra Defense.
Carmat's artificial heart includes a prosthesis that replicates the shape and function of a natural heart and a tablet for adjusting the parameters.
In total, 122 patients have been treated with this artificial heart, which has experienced technical failures in the past, several of them fatal. According to Mr. Piat, nineteen remain implanted to date, thirteen of them in France.
"Carmat has developed a revolutionary technology, but with an execution and financing model that is too heavy for a single player," says Mohamed Kaabouni, analyst at the broker Portzamparc.
The very high cost of the device – 200,000 euros – and its use restricted to a limited number of patients ultimately made its economic model unsustainable.
"We are paying for this development time which has been very long" but also "quality problems" which have cooled investors, Mr. Bastid acknowledged to AFP at the end of September.
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