After fielding multiple takeover offers over the past month, Qiagen has instead decided to go it alone—and investors are less than pleased.
The stock price of the diagnostics developer dropped by about 25% over the Christmas holiday after the company said it would move forward with its current business plans.
In October, Qiagen announced it would reorganize itself around a 15-year partnership with Illumina and its hardware instead of continuing to develop its own next-generation sequencing instruments. That news came after the company missed its third-quarter targets and alongside the departure of its long-time CEO Peer Schatz.
Håkan Björklund, chairman of Qiagen’s supervisory board, said the company’s management decided its “ongoing transformation provides the best means for creating future value for shareholders and other stakeholders.”
Following reports in mid-November that it was being pursued by Thermo Fisher Scientific, Qiagen disclosed that it had received several “conditional, non-binding indications of interest” regarding a full acquisition of the $8 billion company.
Qiagen’s supervisory and management boards said they had held several discussions with potential suitors, but found them “not compelling.”
“We have a strong and differentiated portfolio of molecular testing solutions that provide opportunity for significant growth,” Björklund said in a statement. The stock market drop rewinds the company’s share price to about $31, near where it was before the initial reports of Thermo Fisher’s interest.
Qiagen’s new partnership with Illumina will see the Dutch diagnostics maker develop test kits for the sequencing giant’s hardware, spanning multiple disease areas. This will include companion tests to evaluate tumors for immunotherapies, based on Illumina’s TruSight Oncology assays, as well as other in vitro diagnostics for its MiSeq Dx and NextSeq 550Dx systems.
By Conor Hale
Source: Fierce Biotech
CordenPharma announced its largest strategic investment to date, committing to spend ~€900m over the next three years to enhance its peptide technology platform. The planned investment consists of two major expansion initiatives occurring in parallel in the US and Europe, including both existing facilities and new constructions.
DSM-Firmenich has announced the sale of its MEG-3 fish oil business to KD Pharma Group, a contract development and manufacturing organisation that is active in pharmaceutical and nutritional lipids. As part of the transaction, DSM-Firmenich will obtain a minority stake of 29% in KD Pharma’s parent company O³ Holding GmbH.
Veranova, a development and manufacturing of specialist and complex APIs for the pharmaceutica l and biotech sectors, recently announced the appointment of Cécile Maupas as Senior Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer. Cécile will join the executive team and assume responsibility for business development, marketing, project management, commercial operations, and product management.
