EQT has agreed to buy Qiagen for €10.8 billion, aiming to give the diagnostics and life sciences tools company room to invest under private ownership.
EQT’s proposed €10.8 billion cash acquisition would take Qiagen private at a moment when the company’s growth outlook has weakened and its share price has swung sharply. The deal values the life sciences tools and diagnostics provider at about $12.1 billion, including roughly $1.1 billion in net debt. Its central argument is that private ownership could give Qiagen more room to invest over the longer term while giving shareholders a defined cash price.
A private owner and a long-term investment case
The buyer is EQT Private Equity, a holding company indirectly controlled by EQT’s EQT XI fund and managed by EQT affiliates. Co-investors include Luxinva, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and CPP Investment Board Europe, a subsidiary of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, also known as CPP Investments.
Qiagen said its Supervisory Board and Managing Board reviewed the company’s strategic prospects and spoke with both strategic and financial parties before backing the offer. Their conclusion, according to Supervisory Board Chairman Stephen H. Rusckowski, was that the EQT transaction offered the strongest path after weighing Qiagen’s stand-alone prospects and the alternatives discussed. He described the offer as delivering “compelling value” for shareholders while setting up the company’s next phase under private ownership.
EQT has framed its proposal around continued investment in Qiagen’s products and operations. Partner Matteo Thun-Hohenstein cited the company’s product portfolio, market positions, brands, and technical expertise, and said EQT intends to work with its employees on further product development and growth. The Business Combination Agreement includes commitments concerning Qiagen’s strategy, brands, operating footprint, research and development, employee arrangements, financing, and company culture.
That private-owner pitch will be tested against Qiagen’s recent performance. In April, the company reduced its full-year net sales growth forecast from 5% to 1–2% and lowered its adjusted diluted earnings-per-share forecast from $2.50 to $2.43. The change followed a 5% year-over-year decline at constant exchange rates in sales of its QuantiFERON blood test kit, as demand for immigration-related tuberculosis testing fell in the United States and the Middle East. Qiagen has since suspended its full-year guidance for this year because of the proposed acquisition.
The offer against a volatile share price
EQT is offering €46.50 per share, or about $51.88. That price represents an 8.6% premium to Qiagen’s XETRA closing price on the Wednesday before the offer was announced. Compared with the €33.15 closing price on July 8, the last trading day before reports of private equity interest emerged, the premium is 40.3%. Against Qiagen’s three-month volume-weighted average share price through July 8, the premium is 46.9%.
Those comparisons follow a turbulent stretch for Qiagen investors. A January report that the company was considering strategic options prompted a buying surge: its New York Stock Exchange shares rose 17% in a week, from $47.57 on January 16 to $55.62 on January 23. Its XETRA shares gained 12.5% over the same period, moving from €40.99 to €46.13. The early rally reflected renewed expectations of a sale.
Shares later retreated as the company cut its forecast and investors questioned whether a buyer would emerge. Qiagen’s XETRA stock hit a 52-week low of €27.56 on May 12; its NYSE shares reached $32.13 the next day. Both later recovered, trading in the low €40s and mid-$40s, respectively, before the offer was announced.
The market’s initial response to the deal was measured. On XETRA, shares rose 5%, from €42.82 to €44.94. On the NYSE, they edged up 0.6%, from $50 to $50.32 as of 1:42 p.m. ET on Thursday. The limited move suggests investors were weighing the stated premium against the time and conditions involved in completing the transaction.
EQT’s experience in life sciences
EQT reports €354 billion in assets under management and a 30-year history of acquiring, developing, and selling companies, including businesses in life sciences tools and technology. Its prior investments include Aldevron, in which EQT acquired a majority interest in 2019 before selling the company to Danaher two years later for about $9.6 billion. In 2021, EQT joined Goldman Sachs’ private equity business to buy contract research organization Parexel for $8.5 billion.
The firm also co-led a €129 million financing for Amsterdam-based biotech VectorY in 2023, intended to advance the company’s vectorized antibody programs for neurodegenerative diseases. Other current or former EQT portfolio companies include SPT Labtech, Galderma, Dako, and HemoCue. EQT says its healthcare and life sciences teams include around 100 investment professionals in 15 countries, and that it has invested more than €30 billion across over 210 healthcare companies worldwide.
EQT Private Equity says it has secured enough committed equity and debt financing to cover the offer and related transaction costs. Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, Deutsche Bank, SMBC, Crédit Agricole, and UniCredit are acting as bookrunners and mandated lead arrangers for the committed debt financing.
A long-awaited deal, with a long path to closing
The transaction is expected to close in mid-2027, after which Qiagen says it will continue operating under its existing name and brand. The offer requires a minimum acceptance of more than half of Qiagen’s outstanding share capital, as well as board decisions on post-closing measures and the necessary clearances and other conditions. Qiagen’s boards plan to recommend that shareholders tender their shares and support the deal after EQT publishes its formal offer document.
If the transaction has not closed within 10 months of October 21 because required clearances are still pending, Qiagen may choose to pay an interim dividend of up to $0.47 per share. The dividend, if paid, would not reduce the offer price. Shareholders who do not tender will receive a cash distribution equal to the offer price per share, less applicable withholding taxes; Qiagen says that could leave them with a lower net amount than accepting the offer.
The proposed buyout follows years of intermittent interest in Qiagen. In March 2020, Thermo Fisher Scientific offered about $11.5 billion for the company, seeking to expand its molecular diagnostics business with Qiagen’s coronavirus and other infectious disease tests. Thermo Fisher later raised its offer to $12.5 billion, increasing the per-share price from €39 to €43, but ended the bid five months after it began. Only 47% of outstanding shares were tendered, short of the two-thirds threshold. Hedge fund Davidson Kempner, which increased its Qiagen stake from 3.6% to 8%, was a vocal opponent.
In 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bio-Rad Laboratories was in merger discussions with Qiagen in a deal valued at more than $10 billion. Neither company confirmed the report. Against that history, EQT’s offer is the clearest route yet to a change in ownership. The key question for shareholders is whether the cash premium and EQT’s investment plans outweigh the wait until an expected mid-2027 closing.
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