Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. will acquire Olink Holding AB in a deal that values the pharmaceutical products and services company at about $3.1 billion.
(Bloomberg) — Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. will acquire Olink Holding AB in a deal that values the pharmaceutical products and services company at about $3.1 billion.
Both boards approved Thermo Fisher’s proposal for $26 per share in cash, representing a premium of about 74% of the closing price for Olink’s American Depository Shares on Monday. The deal is expected to be complete by mid-2024.
Thermo Fisher’s purchase of the Uppsala, Sweden-based company enhances its capabilities in protein analysis.
“Olink’s proven and transformative innovation is highly complementary to our leading mass spectrometry and life sciences platforms,” said Marc Casper, chief executive officer of Thermo Fisher, in a statement.
The Olink acquisition “checks the box strategically – proteomics is a core end market for TMO and the company should realize nice channel synergies,” Evercore ISI lead analyst Vijay Kumar wrote in a note to clients.
Thermo Fisher gets most of its revenue selling lab equipment, supplies and services that drug companies and academics use to research, discover and produce new drugs. It was also a major player in the pandemic as a producer of diagnostic test kits for Covid-19.
The company has been on a buying spree. Last October, it agreed to acquire British specialty diagnostics firm Binding Site, which makes products to detect and monitor protein-based blood disorders, in a deal valued at $2.6 billion. In 2021, it bought PPD Inc., a provider of clinical and research services, for $17.4 billion.
On a recent earnings call, Thermo Fisher executives laid out their growth strategy, which includes launching a new tool that enables researchers to uncover proteins that previously evaded detection and could lead to new targeted therapies for a range of diseases.
Olink is on track to report $200 million in revenue in 2024. The acquisition is expected to be dilutive to adjusted earnings by 17 cents per share in the first full year of ownership.
Olink’s US shares gained as much as 67% in New York on Tuesday. Thermo Fisher shares dropped as much as 2.2% before paring to be down 1.1% at 10:04 a.m.
(Updates with analyst comment, additional background starting in fifth paragraph. An earlier version corrected Thermo Fisher’s name in the headline.)
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