Deal will enable growth in diagnostics division and strengthen transfusion medicines business
Grifols is buying Hologic’s interest in their existing joint blood screening unit for $1.85 billion. Grifols has to date owned all customer-facing activities of the business. The assets acquired from Hologic include a San Diego production plant and development rights, licenses to patents, and access to product manufacturers. Grifols has financed the deal through a fully underwritten $1.7 billion term loan and existing cash.
The deal will give Grifols facilities for the R&D and manufacture of assays and instruments for detecting infectious agents in donated blood and plasma, using nucleic acid testing (NAT) technology. Grifols has previously been marketing the assays and instruments worldwide. The firm says the acquisition will allow it to grow its diagnostics division and strengthen its transfusion medicine business through the NAT technology, immunoassay antigen manufacturing, and blood-typing product sales.
“This acquisition is part of the growth strategy foreseen for the Diagnostic Division,” commented Victor Grífols Sr, Chairman and CEO of Grifols. “It is an obvious step that allows us to strengthen a leading position that we first achieved in 2014 in transfusion diagnostics with the acquisition of assets from Novartis, which, among other things, included the rights to market transfusion medicine assays and instruments using NAT technology.”
Grifols and Hologic have a long-standing commercial partnership, through which the companies have developed and market the Grifols Procleix portfolio of automated nucleic acid testing systems. The technology includes tests for HIV, hepatitis, and West Nile virus. In June 2016, the FDA approved the Procleix Zika virus blood screening assay on the Procleix Panther® system, under an IND study protocol.
