Illumina To Buy GRAIL In $8 Bln Cash And Stock Deal

(RTTNews) – Illumina Inc. (ILMN) agreed to buy GRAIL, a healthcare company whose mission is focused on multi-cancer early detection, in a cash and stock transaction valued at about $8 billion.

The deal consists of $3.5 billion in cash and $4.5 billion in shares of Illumina common stock. Illumina currently holds 14.5% of GRAIL’s shares outstanding, and approximately 12% on a fully diluted basis.

Illumina expects to close the transaction in the second half of 2021.

Upon closing of the transaction, current Illumina stockholders are expected to own about 93% of the combined company, while GRAIL stockholders are expected to own about 7% based on the mid-point of the collar.

Illumina expects the transaction will be accretive to its revenue starting in 2021, and to meaningfully accelerate revenue growth over time.

Following the completion of the transaction, GRAIL will operate as a standalone division within Illumina.

GRAIL was founded by Illumina in 2016 and was spun out as a standalone company, powered by Illumina’s NGS technology, to develop state-of-the-art data science and machine learning and create the atlas of cancer signals in the blood, enabling multi-cancer early detection tests.

GRAIL raised about $2 billion to support its technology platform and develop Galleri. An earlier version of Galleri was able to detect more than 50 cancer types, over 45 of which have no recommended screening in the United States. Galleri is expected to launch commercially in 2021 as a multi-cancer, laboratory developed test for early cancer detection from blood.

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