EQT-Linked Bidder Agrees to Buy QIAGEN for €46.50 Per Share

QIAGEN N.V. signed an agreement on Oct. 21 for a voluntary cash offer of €46.50 per share from Crown NL Bidco B.V., an acquisition vehicle indirectly controlled by EQT XI. QIAGEN put the transaction’s enterprise value at about $12.1 billion, including about $1.1 billion in net debt. The company makes life-sciences tools and diagnostics used in research and testing biological samples.

The offer is 40.3% above QIAGEN’s unaffected July 8 closing price of €33.15 and 46.9% above its three-month Xetra volume-weighted average price of €31.66 through that date. Crown NL Bidco also has indirect participation from Luxinva S.A., a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and CPP Investment Board Europe Inc., a subsidiary of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

QIAGEN’s Supervisory Board and Managing Board unanimously approved the agreement. They plan to recommend that shareholders tender their shares after the offer document is published and reviewed, subject to the boards’ fiduciary duties. Stephen H. Rusckowski, chairman of the Supervisory Board, said, “This transaction offers shareholders compelling value.”

The offer had not launched as of the agreement announcement. It requires tenders for at least 50% of QIAGEN’s outstanding share capital plus one share, specified shareholder-meeting resolutions, and merger-control and foreign-investment clearances. Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority must clear the offer document; a U.S. tender-offer filing is expected when the offer launches. The transaction is targeted to close in mid-2027.

QIAGEN also reported preliminary third-quarter net sales of $548 million and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.65. It suspended its full-year 2026 outlook while the transaction is pending.

A previous takeover attempt ended in 2020, when Thermo Fisher Scientific’s revised €43-per-share offer lapsed after 47.02% of QIAGEN shares were tendered, below that offer’s 66.67% minimum threshold. The current agreement sets a lower minimum acceptance threshold of 50% plus one share.