Abbott to Alere: It’s You, Not Me

The party’s about over for the $5.8 billion Abbott (NYSE: ABT) acquisition of Alere Inc. (NYSE: ALR). Everything was bright and rosy when Abbott agreed to pay $56.00 per share for the point-of-care diagnostics and services company. Now, the $177 million termination fee Abbott faces to get out of the deal looks pretty cheap. In April, Abbott reportedly offered Alere $50 million to terminate the deal, but got no takers. The trouble began almost immediately. The day of the announcement, February 1, Alere’s stock price shot up nearly 46%, to $54.11. But later that month,  it announced would delay filing its 2015 financial results with securities regulators due to revenue recognition... Read More »

November Sees a Surge in Lab Deals

Four deals in our Laboratories, MRI & Dialysis sector have been announced in the first half of November. That much activity constitutes a surge for this sector, which now stands at 39 deals through all of 2016. With only six weeks left in the year, it seems unlikely that this sector will surpass 2015’s total of 52 deals. On November 1st, Vital Images, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Medical Systems Group, acquired Karos Health for an undisclosed price. Karos Health provides standards-based clinical imaging exchange and cross-enterprise workflow and diagnostic imaging solutions. The combined technologies provide a customer-centric, modular platform that allows hospital systems to solve a... Read More »

What U.S. Hospitals Are Acquiring in 2016

Hospital acquisitions have surged since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. That year, 76 deals were announced, with a U.S. hospital or health system as a target. By 2012, 107 transactions were recorded for hospital targets, and that still stands as the highest number of deals per year. Only 2015 came close, with 102 hospital transactions. Through mid-November, there have been 79 deals announced with U.S. hospitals or health systems as the target. But what are U.S. hospitals acquiring for their own financial health? Other hospitals or health systems make up the majority of targets every year, of course.  So far this year, through mid November, 66 transactions... Read More »

October M and A Settles into Second Place

What’s a synonym for “slowdown?” We’re as tired of writing about monthly deal volume dropping off as you probably are of reading about it. But M&A activity in October 2016 can only be summed up as slackening, declining, decelerating. Preliminary deal volume is now at the second-lowest level of the year, just 112 transactions. Only January’s deal volume was lower, at 104 transactions. We may have a few additions to October’s total as the fourth quarter grinds on, but it’s not typical to find another 15 deals. Deal value also dropped off. At $12.8 billion, it ranks as the second-lowest level of spending for the year. July 2016 still holds the honor of being the slowest month for... Read More »

Q3:16 Health Care M&A Results: Context Is Everything

Brace yourself. The third quarter results for health care mergers and acquisitions  signal a hard tap on the brakes, both in deal volume and value. That’s compared with the robust second quarter, and the same quarter a year ago. Before we go any further, though, we must note that, compared with all previous third quarters stretching back to 2000, the third quarter of 2016 doesn’t look that bad. Some 369 transactions are now on the books for Q3:16, which ranks this quarter as the second-highest in deal volume for any previous third quarter. The top-ranked third quarter, coincidently, came a year ago, when Q3:15 racked up 411 transactions. So Q3:16’s deal volume slid 10% compared with the... Read More »

LabCorp Ventures into Prenatal Testing

LabCorp (NYSE: LH), the world’s leading healthcare diagnostics company, has acquired Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM), a pioneer in non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for reproductive health, for a total purchase price of $371 million. In July of 2014, Sequenom purchased a license for non-invasive prenatal testing patents and applications from privately-held Mayo Medical Laboratories, and two months later it acquired intellectual property from privately-held Isis Innovation for non-invasive prenatal testing intellectual property. Today, Sequenom is the first laboratory to offer a clinically validated NIPT test (MaterniT®21), which has completed more than 500,000 tests to date. LabCorp’s most... Read More »