Diagnostic Deals: A Roundup of the Key Mergers, Acquisitions, Alliances, Licenses and Other Strategic Transactions From the Past Month

The pace of deal making has picked up a bit, but deal volume remains relatively low on both the M&A and strategic alliance fronts. As usual, smaller molecular and genomics firms are supplying most of the energy; but after a frenetic 2017, the bigger players have toned it down. Here is an overview of the deals that did come down from mid-April to mid-May.

M&A
One of the biggest stories in 2018 lab M&A continues to be who is not partaking—namely, heavy hitters like Abbott, PerkinElmer and Thermo Fisher Scientific who are still digesting major acquisitions from the previous year—although the latter did make a move by acquiring DNA testing tech firm IntegenX for $65 million in March.

Agilent Technologies may be the most active firm of 2018 so far. In March, the lab instruments manufacturer announced that it had agreed to acquire privately held Advanced Analytical Technologies for $250 million. This month, it closed two more deals, including acquisitions of:

• NGS technology firm Lasergen for $105 million; and
• Swiss-based lab management software developer Genohm for an undisclosed price.

LabCorp’s involvement in the period’s biggest deal is something you’d expect; the surprise, though, is that this time the lab giant played the role of seller, announcing its agreement to sell off its Covance Food Solutions business to Eurofins Scientific for $670 million. The deal will allow the firm to focus on its core mission of improving health and lives, noted LabCorp CEO David King in a statement.

Meanwhile, Abcam announced that it was pulling back its takeover bid for Horizon Discovery after Horizon’s board of directors rejected Abcam’s offer claiming that the $364.7 million valuation on which it was based grossly understated Horizon’s actual value. Abcam says it no longer intends to make any further offers for the company.

Strategic Alliances
One deal making a big splash was LabCorp and Walgreens’ agreement to expand their consumer collaboration by opening 10 new LabCorp patient service centers within Walgreens stores in Florida. Last year, the companies opened five co-branded in-store locations providing specimen collection services, four in Colorado and one in North Carolina.

The Walgreens deal was only part of LabCorp’s busy month. In addition to inking the Covance sale noted above, the North Carolina-based diagnostics megafirm announced a new collaboration with The Recovery Platform designed to expand access to medication-assisted opioid recovery treatment. A week earlier, LabCorp inked a deal to become the primary reference lab for the Mount Sinai Health System, one of the largest and most prestigious health networks in the metropolitan New York City area.

Here’s a summary of the key diagnostic deals from mid-April to mid-May: