PacBio – a leading developer of high-quality and highly accurate sequencing solutions – recently announced that it has agreed to acquire Apton Biosystems, a company developing a high throughput short-read sequencer using state-of-the-art optics and image processing, paired with novel clustering and chemistry, that is designed to enable the sequencing of billions of clusters of DNA on one flow cell.
And as a combined organization, PacBio plans to integrate its Sequencing by Binding (SBB) short-read chemistry into Apton’s high throughput instrument to offer a differentiated high throughput sequencer.
PacBio’s acquisition agreement for Apton provides for upfront consideration of about $85 million in an all-stock transaction consisting of about 6.3 million shares of PacBio common stock plus an additional $25 million in stock, cash, or a combination of stock and cash payable in connection with the achievement of $50 million in revenue associated with a high throughput sequencer using Apton’s technology, for an overall transaction valued up to approximately $110 million.
PacBio also posted a presentation in connection with this acquisition which can be found at investor.pacificbiosciences.com.
KEY QUOTES:
“I am impressed with Apton’s progress in developing a novel, high throughput sequencing platform that has the potential to deliver very low-cost sequencing at tremendous scale. By integrating our highly accurate SBB technology with Apton’s advanced optics and image processing capabilities, PacBio expects to commercialize a high throughput short-read platform faster than we had planned. This acquisition is consistent with our strategy to develop a multiproduct short-read sequencing portfolio alongside our long-read sequencing platforms, giving us an opportunity to reach an even greater portion of the multi-billion-dollar sequencing market.”
— Christian Henry, President and CEO of PacBio
“It’s exciting to see how seamlessly our SBB chemistry ports over to the Apton system in our initial trial runs. Acquiring Apton accelerates our development timeline and is not currently expected to increase our planned research and development expenses. We can quickly start integrating our chemistries onto Apton’s high throughput sequencing instrument, which we believe will significantly decrease the time required to develop the new platform. Apton has delivered with a lean and agile organization, and we look forward to fast-tracking the development of this new sequencer. Additionally, this comes at an opportune time with Onso entering the commercialization phase, and the Onso development team looks forward to leveraging its expertise in this new project.”
— Mark Van Oene, Chief Operating Officer at PacBio
“At Apton, we’ve been relentlessly pursuing advances in both cost and throughput to address customer needs in the high throughput market. When PacBio announced its Onso benchtop sequencer, it expanded our imagination of what a high throughput sequencer can offer. We knew that if we could complement our advances in optics with best-in-class chemistry like SBB, we could have the potential to develop a truly differentiated high throughput short-read sequencer, the likes of which hasn’t been seen before.”
— John Hanna, CEO of Apton
