Monday, February 2, 2009

Millipore making a $22M buy of Guava Technologies

By Mass High Tech staff

Biosciences company Millipore Corp. says that it plans to acquire Guava Technologies Inc., a California provider of bench top cell analysis systems, for $22.6 million.

Billerica-based Millipore (NYSE: MIL) and Guava are already partners, having entered into a distribution and co-development partnership in March 2008. According to Martin Madaus, chairman and CEO of Millipore, the company will combine its “broad range of fully-validated reagent kits” with Guava’s instruments to provide a unified flow cytometry research tool to cell biologists. Flow cytometry is a research technique that measures changes in protein expression in individual cells

Privately held Guava made approximately $22 million in sales during 2008, and has a significant installed base of customers in the academic, pharmaceutical and biotechnology markets, according to Millipore officials. The sale is expected to close in the next two weeks.

Guava’s microcapillary flow cytometry system, which enables scientists to conduct flow cytometry using a small, bench top instrument, might also be used to develop new products for the Process Monitoring Tools segment of Millipore’s Bioprocess Division, according to the company. Millipore says it expects to maintain Guava’s manufacturing and commercial operations in Hayward, Calif.

For fiscal 2007, Millipore reported a profit of $136.47 million on revenue of $1.53 billion.