Celera to acquire Atria Genetics in $33M deal to enter HLA market

Maryland, USA-based Celera, an Applera Corp business, and South San Francisco-headquartered Atria Genetics, a privately-held company, have signed a definitive agreement whereby the former will acquire substantially all of the assets of Atria for approximately $33.0 million in cash. Atria has a line of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) testing products that are used for identifying potential donors in the matching process for bone marrow transplantation. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to ccomplete during the second quarter of Celera's fiscal 2008.

Atria participates in the estimated $175.0 million HLA market, of which around 20% is in bone marrow transplantation and the bone marrow registry. The remaining 80% or so is in solid organ matching. Since January 2004, Atria's current HLA sequencing-based typing products have been marketed and distributed worldwide by Abbott Molecular (part of the US health care major Abbott Laboratories) through its alliance with Celera. These revenues have been included in the end-user revenues reported by Celera, although it currently receives a low single digit percentage royalty on these as these products are not part of the profit or loss arrangement within the Abbott alliance.

With this acquisition, Celera will retain 60% of these end-user revenues under the current distribution agreement with Abbott, and will also continue to receive a low single digit percentage royalty on the total end-user rincome. Fiscal 2006 end-user revenues for the Atria products were about $12.0 million, which grew around 10% over the prior year. Atria has been profitable since 2003.