PerkinElmer picks up Covaris’ sample prep portfolio in New Mountain-led deal

After going through a company split earlier this year, PerkinElmer has found a new dance partner—a match orchestrated by its corporate owner, the private equity firm New Mountain Capital. 

New Mountain had acquired the science, food safety and lab supply businesses from the company formerly known as PerkinElmer, along with its nearly century-old brand name, through a $2.45 billion deal this past March

What remained of the previous company—namely its diagnostics, medtech and biopharma R&D divisions—officially took on a new shade of yellow two months later and currently lives under the title Revvity.

Now New Mountain is looking to collate their investments. PerkinElmer has acquired another company in which the firm holds a majority stake: Covaris, the maker of instruments, consumables and sample prep reagents for life sciences research, including genomics and proteomics. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Covaris has a well-defined growth strategy with market-leading technologies and a very capable leadership team that will allow PerkinElmer to deepen its life sciences portfolio in the diagnostics end market,” PerkinElmer CEO Dirk Bontridder said in the deal’s announcement. “We see significant growth opportunities resulting from the combined resources of both companies, with PerkinElmer’s global scale unlocking commercial opportunities for Covaris.”

Founded in 1999 with a headquarters in Woburn, Massachusetts, Covaris’ equipment uses focused ultrasound energy to perform preparation steps without contacting the sample or altering its temperature, such as DNA fragmentation, cell lysis and compound formulation.

Meanwhile, the remit of New Mountain’s PerkinElmer includes environmental and industrial chemical testing and food safety analysis, as well as quality assurance and control products for pharmaceutical manufacturing and other enterprise lab solutions.

“Our two cultures are very similar and both our customers as well as our employees will benefit from strong R&D resources and complementary solution capabilities,” said Covaris CEO Annemarie Watson.