Align Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALGN), best known for its Invisalign system, acquired exocad Global Holdings GmbH in March. The price was approximately $407 million (EUR376 million).
Exocad, based in Darmstadt, Germany, is a global provider of dental CAD/CAM software market and offers fully integrated workflows to dental labs and dental practices via a broad customer base of partners, and resellers in over 150 countries. It was a portfolio company of Carlyle Europe Technology Partners.
The deal has many benefits for Align. First, it strengthens Align’s digital platform that delivers tools and features for diagnostic, restorative, implant, and orthodontic workflows. It also adds exocad’s expertise in restorative dentistry, implantology, guided surgery, and smile design to the Align technology portfolio, extending Align’s Invisalign and iTero digital solutions and paving the way for new, seamless cross-discipline dentistry in lab and at chairside.
And adding exocad broadens Align’s platform reach in digital dentistry with close to 200 partners and more than 35,000 licenses installed worldwide.
Align and exocad began working together in 2017, a collaboration that expanded to a fully-validated workflow that enabled inhouse milling of dental restoration on any compatible milling machine, and more recently, the exocad Connector.
Exocad will continue to operate as it does today and its co-founders and team are expected to join Align after the deal closes in the second quarter of 2020.
We don’t often see deals for dental products, mostly acquisitions of dental and orthodontic practices. However, Cantel Medical Corp. (NYSE: CMD) acquired another medical device company in August 2019, Hu-Friedy Mfg. Co., LLC, for $725 million.
