Thermo Fisher Scientific Set to Acquire Qiagen for $11.5B

With the acquisition, Waltham, MA-based Thermo Fisher Scientific has the potential to boost its molecular diagnostics offerings. The company also has a chance to expand its coronavirus detection offerings with Qiagen’s QIAstat-Dx Respiratory Panel 2019-nCoV test kit.

After months of rumors, Thermo Fisher Scientific is finally acquiring Qiagen for $11.5 billion. The deal calls for Waltham, MA-based Thermo Fisher Scientific to spend about $43.6 per share for Qiagen. The move also comes after Qiagen terminated talks for a merger on Christmas Eve.

The offer price represents a premium of about 23% to the closing price of Venlo, Netherlands-based Qiagen’s common stock on Monday. The proposed acquisition is set to close in the first half of 2021.

Thermo Fisher said the transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to its adjusted earnings per share after the close. It said it also expects to realize total synergies of $200 million by year three following the close, consisting of $150 million of cost synergies and $50 million of adjusted operating income benefit from revenue synergies.

“Our goal is to accelerate the growth of Qiagen as we’ve done with many other acquisitions,” Marc N. Casper, chairman, president and CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific said during a call with investors. “The company expands our specialty diagnostics portfolio by significantly enhancing our position in the attractive molecular diagnostics market including infectious disease testing and other important growth areas.”

This is one of the largest deals Thermo Fisher Diagnostics has ever been involved with. The company’s largest acquisition occurred back in 2014 and was Life Technologies. The transaction was for a total of $13.6 billion.

Qiagen saw a tremendous amount of changes last year. The company’s long-time CEO Peer Schatz stepped down from the leadership helm and transitioned into the role of a special advisor to the company’s supervisory board.

Qiagen also saw itself in a 15-year collaboration with Illumina to broaden the availability and use of NGS-based in-vitro diagnostic kits, including companion diagnostics, for patient management. This is significant because the two companies were previously embroiled in patent litigation.

And in the past few days, Qiagen has been fast at work on its diagnostic for the 2019 Nov-Corona Virus. Late last month, the company shipped its newly developed QIAstat-Dx Respiratory Panel 2019-nCoV test kit to four hospitals in China for evaluation.

During Thermo Fisher’s call with investors, Casper spoke about the coronavirus and how it was changing business. He noted because of the slowdown in business in China the company would see less revenue than it originally guided to in January.

“We play an incredibly important role in helping our customers address the coronavirus …, Casper said, during the call. “We’re very much in the middle of it and that’s from the customer perspective. “From a business perspective … what you’re seeing us do is mitigating the challenges we see in China to the best of our ability and driving growth in other markets [while] certainly managing costs more tightly as well.”