Venlo, The Netherlands and Hamburg, Germany – January 5, 2006 – QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt, Prime Standard: QIA) and Eppendorf AG today announced that they have formed a strategic alliance that includes co-development and co-marketing of complementary and optimized products. The alliance is intended to link two of the strongest brands and product lines in the industry to ensure the highest compatibility of their products targeting the research, applied testing and molecular diagnostics.

 

In addition QIAGEN has acquired Eppendorf’s reagent business which includes the Eppendorf “5-Prime” nucleic acid sample preparation and PCR reagent product lines and related intellectual property. The acquired assets represent an attractive portfolio of preanalytical and nucleic acid amplification consumables as well as a very promising pipeline of proprietary technologies for nucleic acid handling, separation, purification and amplification. The assets add to QIAGEN’s core strategic focus. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. QIAGEN expects the business to add $6 million in net sales in 2006 and $11 million in 2007 and be slightly dilutive to earnings per share based on net income excluding acquisition and restructuring charges by $ 0.01 in 2006 and accretive to earnings per share based on net income excluding acquisition and restructuring charges by $ 0.01 in 2007. QIAGEN expects to incur one-time charges relating to the acquisition of approximately US$3 million in the fourth quarter 2005.

 

The alliance brings together two market leaders and links their complementary technology portfolios and expertise. Eppendorf is a leader in liquid handling including automated solutions as well as corresponding plastic products and instrumentation along the life science research customers’ entire workflow. It has set the industry standard with products including Eppendorf tubes, pipettes, centrifuges, PCR cyclers and work stations. QIAGEN is a leader in preanalytical sample preparation and has created powerful standards through innovation in chemistry and biology driven consumables for preanalytical solutions, including instrumentation for such consumable products.

 

Through the alliance, QIAGEN and Eppendorf intend to focus on improving biological sample management and analysis. The availability of combined and optimized products should create significant benefits for customers in research, applied testing and molecular diagnostics.

 

"Eppendorf"s brand and technical capabilities in many areas including plasticware and liquid handling are legendary in the life science markets. The strong and now aligned brands, product portfolios and innovation engines create a broad array of opportunities to provide significant customer benefits”, said QIAGEN’s Chief Executive Officer Peer Schatz. “Functionalizing Eppendorf solutions with QIAGEN’s biological and chemical preanalytical capabilities will allow both partners to take ease-of-use and capabilities of molecular biology methods to new levels.”

 

“Both brands are each considered to be leading brands in their respective markets and are in leagues of their own in terms of reliability and quality”, said Klaus Fink, Eppendorf AG’s Chief Executive Officer. "Eppendorf"s brand reaches into many areas of science whereas QIAGEN is heavily focused on life science research, applied molecular testing and molecular diagnostics. We believe that this alliance with QIAGEN has the potential to significantly increase the value proposition of Eppendorf products in those areas. Together, our brands address entire workflows with instrumentation as well as consumables and cover the core processes of laboratories employing molecular biology methods.