Planned investments of over €500 million

Sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Mer­ck has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the trans­ac­tion to acquire Exe­lead for approx­i­mate­ly $780 mil­lion in cash. The clos­ing fol­lowed reg­u­la­to­ry approval and the sat­is­fac­tion of oth­er cus­tom­ary clos­ing con­di­tions. The merg­er is expect­ed to enable Mer­ck­’s life sci­ence busi­ness to offer its cus­tomers com­pre­hen­sive end-to-end con­tract devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing ser­vices cov­er­ing the entire mRNA val­ue chain. Mer­ck plans to invest an addi­tion­al € 500 mil­lion over the next ten years to expand Exe­lead­’s tech­nol­o­gy capabilities.

“Exe­lead­’s out­stand­ing com­pe­ten­cies and high­ly expe­ri­enced team will enable the com­pa­ny to reach an impor­tant mile­stone on its path to becom­ing one of the lead­ing con­tract devel­op­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers of mRNA-based vac­cines and ther­a­pies, offer­ing an inte­grat­ed range of CDMO ser­vices for the entire mRNA val­ue chain — from pre­clin­i­cal devel­op­ment to com­mer­cial­iza­tion. mRNA is a promis­ing tech­nol­o­gy with great poten­tial that extends far beyond Covid-19. We will con­tin­ue to invest in this tech­nol­o­gy to lever­age its potential.”

- Matthias Heinzel, Mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board

Exe­lead is a biotech­nol­o­gy CDMO spe­cial­iz­ing in PEGy­lat­ed prod­ucts and com­plex injectable for­mu­la­tions. These include lipid nanopar­ti­cles (LNP), which act as drug deliv­ery vehi­cles. This so-called drug deliv­ery tech­nol­o­gy is a key com­po­nent for mRNA vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics used in Covid-19 and many oth­er indi­ca­tions. The com­pa­ny has expe­ri­ence in all phas­es of LNP for­mu­la­tion devel­op­ment — from pre­clin­i­cal devel­op­ment to com­mer­cial con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing, includ­ing “fill & fin­ish” activities.

The acqui­si­tion of Exe­lead adds to Mer­ck­’s more than 20 years of lipid man­u­fac­tur­ing exper­tise, as well as its mRNA man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties acquired through the 2020 acqui­si­tion of AmpTec. This inte­grat­ed offer­ing aims to reduce sup­ply chain com­plex­i­ty and short­en time to mar­ket thanks to its end-to-end port­fo­lio. This will enable Mer­ck to pro­vide patients with life-enhanc­ing vac­cines and ther­a­pies even faster.

Over the past two years, the Life Sci­ence busi­ness sec­tor has invest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to advance the devel­op­ment of con­ven­tion­al and nov­el modal­i­ties (mAKs, ADC, HP-API, viral vec­tors and mRNA) through acqui­si­tions and capac­i­ty expan­sions. The acqui­si­tion of Exe­lead is anoth­er mile­stone on the path to accel­er­ate inno­va­tion in the com­pa­ny’s Process Solu­tions and Life Sci­ence Ser­vices busi­ness units through tar­get­ed small to mid-sized high-impact acqui­si­tions. The busi­ness of the two units is one of three growth dri­vers (“Big 3”) of the company.