Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Brief Blog: Myriad Acquires Counsyl

In a press release May 28, 2018, and a conference call May 29, Myriad Genetics announced it is acquiring Counsyl for $375M.

  • See summary at Genomeweb, here.  
  • See Myriad press release, here.  
  • A brief note from Zacks Equity Research is here.

Counsyl's lead test is the Foresight test, for 175 carrier screening conditions.  Counsyl also has the NIPT "Prelude" test.   Counsyl had raised a new funding round of $80M in 2017.

The combined women's health sales force is 225 from Myriad, 80 from Counsyl.  In its press release, Myriad notes there are roughly 900K carrier screening panel tests per year in the US and 1.3M NIPT tests per year.

Prior Acquisitions

Prior acquisitions by Myriad include Crescendo Bioscience in 2014 for $245M and Assurex in 2016 for $225M. 

Myriad's March 2018 balance sheet included about $100M in cash as well as $320M in goodwill and $470M in intangible assets.  Over the past month, Myriad's share price has risen from about $28 to about $36.  Myriad was up 3% in early trading on May 29.  Myriad's share price had sagged during the first months of the year, from about $40 in January to about $27 in April.

Competitor Natera slipped 2.5% in early trading, although it is still up +20% over the past couple months. 

Recall that Invitae acquired Good Start Genetics and Combimatrix in 2017.

CPT Codes and CMS Changes

In this summer's pricing process for new CY2019 CPT lab codes, CMS will be handling a new  consolidated single CPT code for expanded carrier screening, and several revised CPT codes for BRCA testing.  See the codes in play, here.