TRENDS AND PERSPECTIVES
Agilent Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) completed the acquisition of Stratagene Corp. (La Jolla, CA), a developer, manufacturer, and marketer of specialized life science research and diagnostic products. Agilent expects this strategic acquisition to accelerate its growth in life sciences through a complementary product portfolio and strong market reach into academia and government.
Last April, Agilent announced the definitive agreement to acquire Stratagene. The company paid approximately $250 million for Stratagene, or $10.94 per share of common stock.
Agilent believes the Stratagene acquisition will strengthen its life science offerings in genomics and proteomics, particularly to academic and government areas where Stratagene products and market leadership are well recognized. Meanwhile, Agilent’s sales channel strength in the pharmaceutical market provides additional opportunities for expanding the reach of Stratagene’s portfolio of reagents and instruments.
Agilent and Stratagene also announced the sale of certain Stratagene assets to a new company, Decisive Diagnostics, a subsidiary of Catalyst Assets LLC, that was formed by Joseph A. Sorge, a former chairman, chief executive officer, and founder of Stratagene. Decisive Diagnostics will acquire from Agilent certain Stratagene assets for $6.6 million and license certain Stratagene molecular diagnostic technologies.
Industry analysts believe that even though the Stratagene acquisition was not intended to boost Agilent’s IVD-related business, the company could someday parlay Stratagene’s technologies to become more involved in IVDs.
“Agilent’s motivations for acquiring Stratagene are first and foremost to gain access to the complementary life sciences reagent and instrumentation business,” says Jeff Ellis, head of diagnostics M&A at CrossTree Capital Partners (Tampa, FL). “In addition, Stratagene’s customer mix in academia and government is attractive to Agilent. Although Agilent has made modest strategic moves to build a presence in the IVD sector in the past, I don’t believe this deal was driven by diagnostics. However, Stratagene’s IVD aspirations stemmed from their expertise in PCR which Agilent now owns. So there may be a longterm play here for Agilent to expand its presence in IVD, but I wouldn’t expect anything too soon.”
