Hologic is selling longtime partner Grifols its piece of the blood-screening business they share for $1.85 billion in cash.

"Divesting our share of our blood screening business to Grifols will strengthen our efforts to build a sustainable growth company by accelerating top- and bottom-line growth rates, while significantly increasing financial flexibility," Hologic Chairman, president and chief executive officer Steve MacMillan said in a statement, explaining that, "we believe that the business and our blood screening employees are best positioned to succeed under a single owner, and that this sale to Grifols provides excellent value for Hologic and our shareholders."

Hologic and Grifols, or their predecessor firms, have collaborated since 1998. The boards of both have agreed to the deal.

Hologic has primarily helmed research and development and manufacturing of the Procleix blood-screening products. Grifols has taken the lead for worldwide commercialization.

Their main products have been molecular assays and instruments that screen blood for viruses, such as HIV, hepatitis C and B, West Nile and Zika.

"This acquisition is part of the growth strategy foreseen for the Diagnostic Division. It is an obvious step that allows us to strengthen a leading position that we first achieved in 2014 in transfusion diagnostics with the acquisition of assets from Novartis, which, among other things, included the rights to market transfusion medicine assays and instruments using NAT technology,” Victor Grífols Sr., Chairman and CEO of Grifols said in a statement, noting that the deal “enabled us to enhance our capabilities to be one of the only companies capable of offering comprehensive solutions to blood and plasma donation centers, from donation to transfusion. Now, with this new transaction, we have contributed our vertical integration process as we also have control over the production and R&D phases."

The new deal will give Grifols a fully paid-up license to certain of Hologic's intellectual property for use in the blood screening field.

About 175 operations and research-and-development staff will move to Grifols. The Rancho Bernardo, California, Hologic blood-screening manufacturing facility will also go to Grifols, although Hologic “will retain the engineering expertise that led to the development of the fully automated TIGRIS and Panther systems, but will partner with Grifols to ensure that blood screening customers continue to benefit from state-of-the-art instrumentation over the long term.”

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