Brooks Automation Purchases Poway Life Sciences Company for $79M

A Massachusetts-based company has purchased Poway's Nexus Biosystems Inc., it was announced Monday.

Brooks Automation Inc. acquired the life sciences company for a net cash price of $79 million with an additional payment of $6.7 million for the unrestricted cash held by Nexus.

The acquisition comes after Brooks purchased RTS Life Sciences earlier this year. CFO Martin Headley said the Poway company—which generated $36 million in revenue in the fiscal year ending June 30—attracted Brooks' leaders because of its "financial attributes."

Nexus CEO John Lillig said in a statement that the company is "excited" about the merger.

"Both Brooks and Nexus have been strong technology innovators," he said. “Combining the technological and global support strengths of our two companies will help to accelerate the ongoing product development, commercialization and customer support of our expanding sample management solutions."

Brook's CEO Steve Schwartz said the merger of the Poway company is an "important step" to the company's business plan.

"With Nexus' operations on the West Coast and meaningful sales and service locations in Switzerland, Japan and Germany complementing our existing Life Science Systems direct channel presence on the East Coast and in the UK, we will have broad global reach," he said.

Brooks Automation is a maker of automation, vacuum and instrumentation solutions.