NEW YORK, Jan 4, 2026, 20:43 ET — Market closed
- Merck shares rose 1.1% on Friday to $106.45, ending near a 52-week high.
- A Merck unit’s tender offer for Cidara is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. ET on Jan. 6, with the merger penciled in ahead of the Jan. 7 open, Nasdaq said.
- Next dates on the calendar include Merck’s $0.85 dividend payment (Jan. 8) and its Q4 2025 earnings call (Feb. 3).
Merck & Co shares closed up 1.1% on Friday at $106.45, leaving the stock within sight of a 52-week high ahead of Monday’s U.S. market reopen.
The near-term focus is a tender offer — a takeover process where shareholders can sell stock directly for cash at a set price — tied to Merck’s planned purchase of Cidara Therapeutics. A Nasdaq corporate actions alert said the offer is scheduled to expire late Tuesday.
That timetable matters because it brings a catalyst into an otherwise light stretch for large-cap pharma headlines and puts attention back on Merck’s dealmaking as it tries to broaden growth drivers beyond Keytruda, its blockbuster cancer immunotherapy.
Nasdaq said the tender offer by Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC for all outstanding Cidara shares is scheduled to expire one minute after 11:59 p.m. ET on Jan. 6, unless extended or terminated. It said the subsequent merger is tentatively scheduled to close before the market open on Jan. 7, with Cidara stock slated to be halted after the after-hours session at around 7:50 p.m. on Jan. 6 and suspended effective Jan. 8.
In the offer materials, Merck said the tender offer can be extended in increments of up to 10 business days if conditions have not been satisfied or waived, including waiting periods tied to antitrust review.
Merck announced the Cidara deal in November, saying it would acquire the company through a subsidiary and that the transaction was expected to close in the first quarter of 2026, subject to conditions including shareholder tenders. Merck said Cidara’s lead asset, CD388, was designed to prevent influenza and “is not a vaccine,” and it flagged an interim analysis in the first quarter of 2026 in a Phase 3 study targeting 6,000 participants. Merck
On the tape, traders have been treating $107.59 — the prior 52-week high — as a key level after Merck finished Friday about 1% below it, MarketWatch data showed. Friday’s range ran from $104.43 to $106.61, according to market data.
Merck’s move on Friday came alongside gains in other big drugmakers, with Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer both higher and Eli Lilly also rising, while Merck’s volume trailed its recent average, MarketWatch reported.
Income-focused investors also have Jan. 8 on the calendar. Merck said its board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.85 per share, payable that day — about a 3.2% annualized yield based on Friday’s close.
The next major company-specific checkpoint is Feb. 3, when Merck is scheduled to host its Q4 2025 earnings call at 9:00 a.m. ET, according to the company’s events page. Investors typically use that report to gauge full-year guidance, product momentum and the pace of deal integration.
Sectorwide, the calendar also turns toward the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, set for Jan. 12–15, a venue that often drives sentiment and deal chatter across biotech and large pharma.
One risk: the Cidara timeline can still move. The offer documents lay out conditions that can trigger extensions, and any delay would test investor patience around Merck’s push into respiratory medicines and near-term capital allocation.
When trading resumes on Monday, investors will watch whether Merck can clear the $107.59 high and how headlines shape into the Jan. 6, 11:59 p.m. ET tender-offer deadline and the targeted Jan. 7 close.
