Acquisition is part of strategy to strengthen product portfolio, especially in the focus area of laboratory consumables, with internal research and development efforts and strategic acquisitions
Varian has acquired PL International, and its subsidiaries including Polymer Laboratories, a privately owned company based in the United Kingdom, for approximately US$42 million in cash net of acquired cash, subject to certain net asset adjustments.
The transaction also includes an opportunity for additional purchase price payments over three years, depending on future financial performance.
Those future payments could total up to $23 million if aggressive performance targets are achieved.
Polymer Laboratories is a leader in the development of consumables and instrumentation for advanced polymer analysis, including columns, standards and specialist chromatography systems dedicated to gel permeation chromatography (GPC) analysis.
Polymer Laboratories also manufactures systems for high throughput screening and process monitoring applied to polymeric materials.
For HPLC, Polymer Laboratories manufactures robust polymeric media and columns for biochromatography, and specialist detectors.
For the pharmaceutical and clinical diagnostic industries, Polymer Laboratories manufactures resins for drug development and pharmaceutical process applications, and clinical diagnostic polymer particles.
"The acquisition of Polymer Laboratories is strategic to the advancement of Varian's goal to grow the applications-based consumable products to become a larger portion of the business," said Garry Rogerson, president and CEO, Varian.
"Polymer Laboratories is a world leader in polymer-based consumables, allowing us to offer customers complete systems for the purification, separation, and preparation of polymers, including proteins.
"We are also excited about Polymer Laboratories's HPLC detectors, one of which, the evaporative light scattering detector, is well suited for operation together with mass spectrometers and will enhance our information rich detectors product lines".
Polymer Laboratories generated revenues of approximately $22 million for the twelve months ended 30 September 2005.
Added Edward McClammy, senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer, Varian: "For the first three to six months, Polymer Laboratories should be neutral to pro forma earnings per share with revenues at historical run rates.
"After this transition period, we anticipate the acquisition to be accretive and revenues to grow faster than our average".
"The sale of Polymer Laboratories to Varian is a win-win situation for both companies.
"It has been our intention to be acquired by a company with strategic benefits utilising the broad spectrum of technologies within our company, and which would give us the opportunity to grow our portfolio and provide greater opportunities to our skilled staff," said Frank Warner, chairman of Polymer Laboratories.
"I firmly believe that Varian's global infrastructure will provide a platform for maximum growth at a faster rate than might otherwise have been possible".
GPC is an analytical high performance liquid chromatography technique used to separate components based on their molecular size in solution.
It is the technique of choice for rapid and reliable characterisation of polymer molecular weight and molecular weight distributions.
Polymer Laboratories is described as a leader in the field of GPC, with its world-class consumables, systems and software.
This acquisition is part of Varian's strategy to strengthen the company's product portfolio, especially in the focus area of laboratory consumables, with internal research and development efforts and strategic acquisitions of complementary products and technologies.
