Agilent Technologies plans to acquire Seahorse Bioscience for $235 million cash, the companies said today, in a deal expected to complement Agilent’s separations and mass spectrometry solutions offerings while expanding its reach into pharma.
Founded in 2001, Seahorse Bioscience is a provider of instruments and assay kits for measuring cell metabolism and bioenergetics. Seahorse’s XF metabolic analyzers and stress test kits specialize in cell metabolism measurements.
“Seahorse Bioscience’s unique technology is the perfect complement to Agilent’s market-leading separations and mass spectrometry solutions, in particular for metabolomics research and disease research in pharma,” Patrick Kaltenbach, president of Agilent’s Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group, said in a statement.
“The combination of these two platforms gives scientists a more comprehensive and faster path to researching the most challenging diseases affecting mankind. Seahorse’s team and technology are an ideal fit for Agilent and for our customers, and we look forward to bringing them on board,” Kaltenbach added.
According to Seahorse, XF technology has been used in research in a wide variety of diseases and disorders—including neurodegeneration, aging, cancer, cardiovascular disease, cell physiology, toxicology and hepatobiology, immunology, infectious diseases, mitochondrial diseases, model organisms, obesity, diabetes, metabolic disorders, screening and translational medicine.
“We are proud to have enabled the exploration of bioenergetics in living cells by nearly 10,000 scientists worldwide, and to have created a new category of cell-based assay tools,” added Seahorse Bioscience CEO Jay Teich. “Joining Agilent, a premier, customer-focused supplier of technology to a much broader market, will give many more researchers access to Seahorse tools. And when these two technology-rich companies combine, we expect to offer a series of new products and applications that will benefit our customers.”
Seahorse Bioscience is headquartered in Billerica, MA, with manufacturing operations in Chicopee, MA, and regional offices in Copenhagen and Shanghai. Seahorse employs just under 200 people, “most of whom are expected to join Agilent,” the companies added. The privately-held Seahorse’s FY15 revenue is estimated to be $49 million.
The deal is expected to be completed by November 1, subject to local laws and regulations as well as customary closing conditions, Agilent and Seahorse said.
Agilent provides instruments, software, services and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow to customers in more than 100 countries. The company generated revenue of $4 billion in fiscal 2014 and employs about 12,000 people worldwide. Agilent marks its 50th anniversary in analytical instrumentation this year.
