Less than a year after delisting from AIM to move to Nasdaq life science tools and antibody maker Abcam (ABCM:NASDSQ) has agreed a sale to US conglomerate Danaher (DHR:NYSE) for $24 per share, slightly above Friday’s (25 August) closing price of $23.2.

The Cambridge-based company which listed on AIM in 1998 became a big retail favourite and one of the most successful companies on the junior market rising eight-fold to a market capitalisation of around £700 million before jumping ship stateside in October 2022.

Behind its success was the simple idea of making antibodies available for purchase online to the thousands of medical researchers around the globe.

Abcam’s shares had already moved higher following the announcement of a strategic review on 23 June after consulting with shareholders to evaluate a ‘broad range of options’ to maximise shareholder value including a sale of the company.

The comprehensive review saw the company engage with more than 20 strategic acquirers before entering into a definitive agreement with Danaher.

Peter Allen, Chairman of Abcam, said: ‘Following a rigorous process, I’m confident this combination with Danaher maximizes value for shareholders while delivering an excellent outcome for our employees and customers.’

BLAST FROM THE PAST

Prior to the strategic review Abcam’s co-founder Jonathan Milner, who owns around 6% of the company and hasn’t been involved operationally for over a decade, tried to wrest back control by requesting an emergency general meeting and vote to make him executive chairman while also removing three directors.

Urging shareholders to vote against Milner’s proposed resolutions the company said: ‘We believe Jonathan Milner’s attempt to wrest control of Abcam and become its de facto CEO will jeopardize Abcam’s recent momentum as well as its day-to-day operations, growth strategy and competitive position.

‘Jonathan Milner has failed to articulate to shareholders or the Company what appointing him to an executive chairman role would mean in practice or what new strategy he is seeking to deploy.

Rather cuttingly, the company added, ‘Abcam has transitioned away from being a simple broker of third-party antibodies towards being an innovation-oriented, quality-focused partner to life science researchers, driving profitable, sustained market share gains.

‘This is a fundamentally different business from Jonathan Milner’s transactional “Amazon of Antibodies”, a catalogue of predominantly third-party products, which led to a high level of customer complaints.’

Milner subsequently withdrew his requisition.

IS DANAHER THE BEST KEPT US SECRET?

Under its new owners Abcam will be run independently by the same management team and reside inside Danaher’s life sciences division.

Danaher was founded by Steven and Mitchell Rales in the early 1980s and the shares have since risen over 325-fold making them one of the best performing US shares over the last four decades.

From the 1990s the business was organised around strategic platforms with sustainable competitive advantages in sizeable global markets.

Over the next decade Danaher established leadership positions in the sectors that define it today, beginning with water in 1998 and followed by product identification (2001), diagnostics (2006) and life sciences (2009).

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