Bruker Announces Share Purchase Agreement to Acquire Molecular Diagnostics Innovator ELITechGroup

Bruker Corporation (Nasdaq: BRKR) announced today that it has entered into a definitive share purchase agreement with TecFin S.à r.l., a controlled affiliate of PAI Partners, a pre-eminent private equity firm, to acquire ELITechGroup, for €870 million in cash, excluding the carved out ELITech clinical chemistry business. As reported in an 8-K SEC filing on December 26, 2023, Bruker had previously entered into a put option agreement with the sellers, pending workers’ council consultations in France and The Netherlands. This put option has now been exercised, and the parties have entered into a binding share purchase agreement. Bruker expects to close the transaction in the second quarter of 2024, subject to regulatory approvals, the carve-out of the clinical chemistry business, and other customary closing conditions.

ELITechGroup, with over 500 employees and over 40 active patents, develops and commercializes innovative, proprietary molecular diagnostic (MDx) systems and assays, as well as niche biomedical systems and microbiology products. Its molecular diagnostic business accounts for the majority of the to-be-acquired revenues and provides the unique sample-to-answer (S2A) instruments InGenius and BeGenius in the mid-to-high throughput MDx category. Both offer a broad and differentiated menu of esoteric and mainstream PCR diagnostic assays for infections that are transplant-incurred, sexually transmitted, respiratory, gastrointestinal, blood-borne, hospital-acquired and more. There is currently a global installed base of more than 1,000 InGenius and BeGenius systems in clinical routine usage, with a focus on Europe and Latin America, primarily in mid-sized hospitals and clinical laboratories, or as esoteric testing platforms in large hospitals and labs, where they are complementary to high-volume MDx systems by other Tier 1 IVD companies.

ELITechGroup´s biomedical systems and microbiology businesses include automated slide stainers, cystic fibrosis sweat testing instruments, osmometer instruments and selected microbiology consumables and assays.

Dr. Wolfgang Pusch, the President of Bruker’s Microbiology and Infection Diagnostics division, said: “The ELITech MDx business will give Bruker access to modern sample-to-answer (S2A) systems and a broad infectious disease assay portfolio, including viral testing. ELITech’s breadth of testing menu, ease of use, and fast time-to-result complements Bruker’s novel LiquidArray syndromic panels, specialty fungal infection, tuberculosis, mycobacteria and HIV MDx portfolio. The ELITech esoteric molecular diagnostics portfolio is nicely complementary to our MALDI Biotyper microbial identification platform in infectious disease diagnostics, and both together establish Bruker as an innovative and growing ’Tier 2’ infectious disease specialist in the in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) market.”