Qiagen to Acquire Gentra Systems for $38M

NEW YORK, May 4 (GenomeWeb News) - Qiagen has agreed to acquire Minneapolis-based Gentra Systems in a $38 million transaction that the companies expect to close at the end of the second quarter, Qiagen said today.

Qiagen will purchase all outstanding shares of privately held Gentra, which produces nucleic acid purification products for large-scale blood samples, for approximately $38 million in cash, and it expects to incur one-time charges of about $0.02 in EPS at the close of the transaction, the companies said.

Depending on the timing of the transaction, Qiagen estimates that Gentra's assets will contribute about $6 million to sales in the second half of 2006.

Qiagen said that Gentra's products will strengthen its position with customers involved in biobanking, molecular diagnostics, and translational medicine.

The biobanking and archiving market "is increasingly attractive due to current trends in molecular diagnostics, biomedical research and translational medicine," Peer Schatz, Qiagen CEO, said in a statement. "The Gentra products are very complementary to QIAGEN's product and technology portfolio providing additional solutions to enable large-scale research in biomedical, genomic and molecular diagnostic laboratories."