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Thermo Fisher Spent $314M on Two Acquisitions in Q1; Settled IP Suits With Roche 454, Illumina

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Thermo Fisher Scientific disclosed in a filing yesterday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission the purchase price for its recent acquisitions of Core Informatics and Finesse Solutions, as well as the settlement earlier this year of three patent lawsuits involving DNA sequencing technology from Roche 454 Life Sciences and Illumina.

Thermo Fisher acquired Core Informatics in early March for a total of $94 million, net of cash acquired. The informatics firm, which has been offering cloud-based platforms for scientific management, is now part of Thermo's Analytical Instruments segment. Last year, Core Informatics launched a validated version of its Platform-for-Science infrastructure for regulated laboratories in the biopharmaceutical industry and clinical genomics. Thermo said in the filing that Core Informatics had approximately $10 million in revenues in 2016 and that the purchase price exceeded the fair market value of the identifiable net assets, so it allocated $63 million of the price to goodwill.

The acquisition of Finesse Solutions took place in mid February, and the total purchase price, net of cash acquired, was $220 million. Finesse develops scalable control automation systems and software for bioproduction and had approximately $50 million in revenues last year. Thermo said the purchase price exceeded the fair market value of the identifiable net assets, and it allocated $127 million of the price to goodwill.

In addition, Thermo disclosed that it March it settled two patent lawsuits filed in 2015 by Roche's 454 Life Sciences against Thermo Fisher Scientific, Ion Torrent Systems, and Life Technologies in the US District Court for the District of Delaware and in Germany. Roche had alleged infringement of patents relating to methods of analyzing nucleic acid sequences using emulsion amplification, which it said were used in Ion Torrent sequencing workflows. Under the settlement, Thermo licensed the technology from 454 Life Sciences for $25 million in cash and granted Roche a license to an unnamed technology owned by Thermo.

In April, Thermo settled another lawsuit, which Illumina had filed in 2011 against Life Technologies in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, alleging infringement of a patent relating to methods for making bead arrays by Ion Torrent’s semiconductor sequencing systems. Thermo said the settlement agreement resolved this litigation "for immaterial financial terms."