NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Danaher today announced a definitive deal to acquire privately held genomics consumables firm Integrated DNA Technologies for an undisclosed amount.
Headquartered in Skokie, Illinois, IDT will operate as a standalone company within Danaher's Life Sciences segment after the close of the deal, which is expected to occur in mid-2018.
IDT primarily manufactures custom DNA and RNA oligonucleotides for customers in academic and biopharmaceutical research, as well as the biotechnology, agriculture, clinical diagnostics, and pharmaceutical end markets. The firm was founded in 1987 and currently has more than 1,200 employees and 100,000 customers globally.
"IDT expands our presence into the highly attractive genomics market and will help play a central role in accelerating our customers' research and time to market as they develop critical diagnostic tests and potential lifesaving therapies," Danaher Life Sciences Executive Vice President Rainer Blair said in a statement. "IDT's historical double-digit core revenue growth and strong margins are a testament to the team's commitment to the highest standards of quality, service, and technical expertise.
In a research note, Evercore analyst Ross Muken estimated the deal at about $1.9 billion and said that IDT's revenues have "likely grown mid-teens" on a core basis recently. "IDT is truly one of the world's greatest reagent businesses and is clearly one of the prime remaining assets of scale in consumables left in the [life science tools] complex."
The deal would be Danaher's largest in the Life Sciences segment since it acquired Pall in 2015 for $13.8 billion. After acquiring Cepheid, which operates in Danaher's Diagnostics segment, for $4 billion in late 2016, the Washington-based conglomerate has been relatively quiet on the M&A front. In 2017, it spent $400 million on 10 strategic bolt-on buys, and many Wall Street analysts had expected it would pull the trigger on a larger deal in 2018.
IDT, meanwhile acquired GeneWorks' oligonucleotide manufacturing business a year ago, and in May 2017, it partnered with Illumina to develop a portfolio of indexed adapters for the next-generation sequencing market.
In early morning trading today, Danaher's shares rose a fraction of 1 percent on the New York Stock Exchange to $102.10.