Analytik Jena said today it will absorb into its core life sciences business the operations of its subsidiary CyBio, bringing into one merged unit CyBio’s modern liquid handling and laboratory automation technology for global drug discovery and the biotech industry.
Analytik Jena AG now already holds 91.9% of the voting rights of CyBio, having acquired a majority of shares in 2009. This year, Analytik Jena said, it plans to absorb CyBio’s businesses through a “squeeze-out merger” in which Analytik Jena will transfer or “squeeze out” the remaining 8.1% of shareholders holding minority stakes in the company, in return for an undisclosed amount of cash.
A merger by absorption agreement was signed this past Friday, while a resolution to that effect will be voted on by CyBio shareholders at its annual General Meeting on May 22.
“CyBio AG has become an integral and successful part of the Analytik Jena AG family,” said Klaus Berka, Analytik Jena’s CEO. “The planned merger and structural integration is the logical continuation of this path with the aim of bundling our competencies in the Group portfolio and thus providing access for our customers to an even more comprehensive range.”
Analytik Jena said the business activities of CyBio will be continued after the merger, and even expanded in coming years. CyBio products and services will continue to be marketed as an independent CyBio product line under the CyBio brand.
CyBio employs 98 staff members worldwide; its operations are already consolidated in Analytik Jena, which until now has maintained CyBio as one of eight “affiliated companies” resulting from mergers and acquisitions stretching back to 2006. Analytik Jena itself has three operating segments—life sciences, analytical instrumentation, and optics.
Analytik Jena’s life-sci offerings include systems for bioanalysis, from DNA purification through robotics, PCR products, and detection to complex kits for molecular diagnostics.
CyBio operations as well as those at a U.S.-based subsidiary, UVP, helped the life-sciences business unit enjoy a 45% jump in sales during Analytik Jena’s first fiscal-year quarter ending December 31, 2013, rising to €10.664 million ($14.8 million). The parent company does not break down earnings per business unit, but said that overall it saw earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rise 33.7% to €3.021 million ($4.2 million).
“For its Life Science business unit, Analytik Jena assumes that it will continue to be able to achieve double-digit growth rates in the current financial year,” the company stated in its “Three Months Report” of quarterly financial results.
In February, Analytik Jena said that CyBio delivered a robotics system to Boehringer Ingelheim for replicating plates for its compound management activities in its Biberach, Germany, plant as part of a contract valued “in the upper six-figure range.” The contract comprised delivery of the complete solution including the pipettor workstation CyBi®-Well vario with 384 pipetting heads and accessories, the CyBi-Drop3D for dispensing as well as numerous CyBi-QuadStack microplate storage units.
“We have replaced a unit that has been in use for about ten years with the new system and, in addition our expertise in project business, have added core CyBio products to the system,” CyBio Executive Board member Thomas Moore said in a statement at the time.