The asset at the center of the pending Supernus-Indivior merger is a once-monthly injection given by a clinician. Sublocade, Indivior’s extended-release buprenorphine for opioid use disorder, generated $856 million in 2025, more than Supernus’s total 2025 revenue of $719 million, and Indivior expects it to approach $1 billion in 2026. If stockholders of both companies approve the deal at special meetings on Oct. 15, Supernus investors will own 43.5% of a combined company whose single largest product treats addiction rather than ADHD, Parkinson’s disease or depression.
That shift is easy to miss in the headline terms of the transaction announced on Aug. 3, alongside both companies’ second-quarter results. The combined business would keep Supernus’s name, its Nasdaq ticker, its Rockville, Maryland, headquarters and its chief executive, Jack Khattar. Its revenue base, though, would lean heavily toward Indivior.
A Product Built on Monthly Dosing
Buprenorphine has been used to treat opioid addiction for decades, most often as a daily film or tablet. Suboxone, Indivior’s older product, is one of the best-known versions. Sublocade delivers the drug as a monthly injection given by a health care provider, which removes the need for a patient to take a daily dose.
The product launched in 2018, and more than 500,000 U.S. patients have been prescribed it since, according to Zacks. In the first quarter of 2026, a record 31,800 patients started treatment, and Indivior counted 191,600 patients treated over the preceding 12 months. Active prescribers rose 19% from a year earlier, providers treating five or more patients rose 20%, and payor coverage exceeds 88%. Sublocade dispensed units grew 20% in that first quarter, ahead of Indivior’s full-year expectation of mid-teens unit growth.
Indivior’s total first-quarter revenue rose 19% to $317 million, which included a $14 million gross-to-net benefit, Zacks reported.
Long-acting injectables are still a small share of opioid addiction treatment. They account for about 9% of treatment penetration, Zacks reported, but the segment grew at a high-teens rate in 2025, and Indivior’s share of it held at about 76% in the first quarter of 2026.
The Growth Numbers
Sublocade’s revenue rose 13% in 2025 to $856 million, on total Indivior net revenue of about $1.2 billion. The pace picked up in 2026. First-quarter Sublocade sales climbed 32% to $232 million, and second-quarter sales rose 21% to $253 million.
Indivior’s total second-quarter revenue reached $343 million, up 14%, and adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $186 million. The company raised its full-year net revenue guidance to $1.295 billion to $1.365 billion. For Sublocade alone, it had guided earlier in the year to $950 million to $990 million, about 13% growth at the midpoint, with U.S. dispensed units expected to grow at a mid-teens rate.
Indivior has also narrowed its development pipeline this year. It decided not to move INDV-6001 into Phase 3 and stopped internal development of INDV-2000 in opioid use disorder after a Phase 2 result, Zacks reported, with plans to seek outside partners for that program. The decisions leave Sublocade and Suboxone as the core of Indivior’s contribution to the merger.
What Supernus Contributes
Supernus brings a broader but smaller set of products. Its 2025 revenue rose 9% to $719 million, led by Qelbree at $304.7 million, up 26%, and GOCOVRI at $146.8 million. Second-quarter 2026 revenue reached a record $219.1 million, up 32%, and the company raised its 2026 forecast to $860 million to $890 million, from an initial range of $840 million to $870 million.
Qelbree, a non-stimulant ADHD treatment approved for children in 2021 and adults in 2022, produced $89.2 million, up 15%. GOCOVRI, for dyskinesia in Parkinson’s patients, added $37.6 million. ONAPGO, a Parkinson’s infusion device launched in April 2025, sold $13.5 million. Collaboration revenue from ZURZUVAE, the postpartum depression drug Supernus gained through its July 2025 purchase of Sage Therapeutics and shares with Biogen, came to $35.4 million.
Qelbree reached its fifth anniversary of FDA approval in July, and Supernus said patients had filled roughly 3 million prescriptions since launch, more than 1 million of them in 2025. ONAPGO’s sales have climbed from $1.6 million in the second quarter of 2025, and Supernus expects to file for a second ONAPGO supplier in the third quarter, with possible approval by mid-2027. Supernus collects half of the U.S. net revenue Biogen records for ZURZUVAE, whose U.S. sales rose about 53% in the quarter.
“In 2026, we are focused on continued progress of our key growth products,” Khattar said in February, when Supernus first guided to revenue of $840 million to $870 million and adjusted operating earnings of $140 million to $170 million for the year.
Supernus also brings a clean balance sheet. It had about $372 million in cash and no debt as of late July, according to the companies’ proxy supplement. Indivior had about $249 million in cash and about $500 million in debt.
The Combined Company
Put together, the two businesses would have about $2.2 billion in annual revenue across 11 marketed central-nervous-system medicines. Indivior’s 2026 revenue guidance alone accounts for well over half of that figure, and Sublocade is the largest single product in the combined portfolio.
The companies expect about $125 million in annual cost synergies and pro forma adjusted EBITDA of $888 million, with net leverage below one times. Indivior’s Tony Kingsley would chair an eight-member board split evenly between directors from each side.
“This merger brings together two complementary organizations with a shared vision of improving the lives of people living with central nervous system diseases,” Khattar said when the deal was announced.
In a separate interview with FiercePharma, Khattar called it “the ideal time for two companies that have done so much” to combine.
Indivior Chief Executive Joe Ciaffoni framed it around future deals. The merger-of-equals structure, he said, preserves “balance-sheet strength that strongly positions the new company to execute on business development opportunities at a level that neither company could contemplate today on their own.”
Two Different Disease Areas
The merger pairs businesses with little product overlap. Supernus’s drugs treat ADHD, complications of Parkinson’s disease and postpartum depression. Sublocade and Suboxone treat opioid addiction, and Sublocade’s growth depends on how many providers adopt monthly injections in place of daily buprenorphine. The combined company would sell across addiction, ADHD, depression and Parkinson’s disease under a single central-nervous-system banner.
Indivior arrives with a recent change of its own. The company, which operates from Richmond, Virginia, and Slough, England, ended its London Stock Exchange listing on July 25, 2025, keeping its primary listing on Nasdaq. The merged company would remain a Nasdaq-only stock.
The Cost of the Special Dividend
Indivior shareholders will receive a $1 billion special cash dividend if the merger closes, partly financed by a $650 million term loan from Citibank. If committed financing were unavailable, Indivior would instead pay $500 million at closing plus rights to an additional $529.5 million within a year, according to the registration statement.
The dividend reduces the cash the combined company starts with and adds to its debt. Cantor Fitzgerald, Supernus’s financial adviser, subtracted the full $1 billion when valuing Indivior’s shares, arriving at a dividend-adjusted range of about $24.20 to $43.90 a share.
How Investors Responded
InsideArbitrage calculated an implied value of $61.62 a Supernus share at announcement, a 38.07% premium to the prior close, and a total transaction value of $3.38 billion. Supernus shares fell 6% on Aug. 4, the first trading day after the announcement, according to Quiver Quantitative, which attributed the decline to concerns about integration and the way the exchange ratio divides value between the two shareholder groups.
The institutional register shows the stock held by both index funds and active managers. BlackRock reported about 9.35 million Supernus shares at the end of June, Millennium Management about 3.85 million, and Vanguard Portfolio Management about 3.31 million, according to 13F data compiled by InsiderSet.
Armistice Capital, a New York hedge fund with a portfolio centered on healthcare, held 2,646,201 Supernus shares worth about $123 million on June 30, the fourth-largest institutional position. Nomura Asset Management, State Street and Dimensional Fund Advisors also ranked in the top 10, and Citadel Advisors, Two Sigma Investments and D.E. Shaw were among hedge funds with smaller stakes. Healthcare-focused funds also appear on the register, including Soleus Capital Management, with 520,000 shares, and Catalio Capital Management, with about 257,000.
For most of those funds, the decision on Oct. 15 is the same one: whether a 43.5% share of a larger, Sublocade-led company is worth more than full ownership of Supernus on its own. Cantor Fitzgerald’s standalone discounted cash flow range for Supernus was about $50.55 to $59.50 a share, according to the proxy supplement, while InsideArbitrage’s implied deal price at announcement was $61.62.
If the merger closes, those holders will receive Indivior shares at the fixed 1.5401 ratio, and their exposure will shift from a company led by an ADHD drug to one led by an opioid addiction treatment.
