Roche Is Willing to Pay a Pretty Penny for the Rest of Foundation Medicine

Roche already owns a majority stake in Foundation Medicine, but now the Swiss company wants to buy the rest of the genomic diagnostics company, and it is willing to pay a pretty penny to do so. Roche agreed to pay $137 a share to buy the rest of Cambridge, MA-based Foundation Medicine, a $2.4 billion transaction that values the company at $5.3 billion. The offer price represents a 29% premium over Foundation Medicine's closing stock price Monday. The deal is expected to close during the second half of the year. The deal marks a turning point in Roche's relationship with Foundation Medicine, which dates back to January 2015 when Roche invested roughly $1.03 billion to acquire a majority interest in Foundation Medicine. The partnership included a broad R&D collaboration to accelerate Foundation Medicine's new product development initiatives, optimize treatments for cancer patients, and better design and understand the results of clinical trials based on molecular information, as well as a commercial collaboration aimed at expanding the global sales efforts for the company's products. Foundation Medicine develops genomic profiling assays designed to identify the molecular alterations in a patient's cancer and match them with relevant targeted therapies, immunotherapies, and clinical trials. Roche said Foundation Medicine will continue to operate as a separate and autonomous legal entity. In December 2017, Foundation Medicine scored FDA approval for a first-of-its-kind comp...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Business Source Type: news