Deals Shaping the Medical Industry, August 2017

Quidel Corp. is acquiring Alere's Triage MeterPro cardiovascular and toxicology assets and the Triage B-type naturietic peptide (BNP) assay business. (Jul.)

For both, Quidel will shell out $400mm plus $40mm in contingent payments payable in five installments of $8mm. The company will fund the acquisition with cash and financing from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase Bank. Alere is selling off the products in order to obtain antitrust approvals which are required for its acquisition by Abbott. The MeterPro business brought in $146mm in revenues in 2016, while the BNP assets, which run on Beckman Coulter analyzers, generated $51mm last year. Quidel will sell the acquired products using its direct sales force and distributors. The deal also includes a manufacturing facility and associated real estate in San Diego. Alere's Triage MeterPro is designed to provide rapid diagnostic results for cardiovascular events and drug screening. It incorporates up to 16 immunoassays and can use samples of whole blood, plasma, or urine. The product is complementary to Quidel's own installed base of Sofia and Solana platforms in the hospital segment. The Triage BNP test is a point-of-care fluorescence immunoassay used with the MeterPro to measure BNP in anticoagulated whole blood or plasma specimen