Complete Genomics To Be Divested?
Hearing rumors that Complete Genomics is to be divested to a European investment group, with manufacturing moving to the US.
This is an interesting, but slightly confusing rumor. Most of it sounds quite credible except the “manufacturing moving to the US”. Complete list 8 instruments on their site, essentially the complete MGI instrument lineup.
Would the new entity acquire licenses to all this technology from MGI? Would they develop a new instrument? This is likely fairly practical for a midrange instrument, but more challenging for something like the T7.
My guess would be that the T7 is where most of the U.S. revenue come from, with a few large users using this as it likely somewhat cheaper than a NovaSeq X.
Again, nothing really stopping from a US designed and manufacturing T7 being developed… but a significant investment.
Reagent manufacturing would be the other side of this, again an expensive proposition, but not impossible…
But why?
The big question is would a non-China Complete Genomics do any better than Element and Ultima? Both of which appear to be doing “ok” but almost certainly non-profitable.
I suspect not, and I don’t think a divested Complete would be a massive concern for Illumina.
It may however put Complete in a somewhat better position to compete in the US than it is now, and if they retain access to things like the BGI nanopore IP that would make things more exciting!
The other question is… will they really move manufacturing to the US? That’s a very expensive proposition… it seems much cheaper, at least at the start to lean on MGIs current manufacturing capability using them as a manufacturing partner. That would however leave them subject to tariffs and sanctions, which I assume the divestment would be designed to avoid…
What an exciting world we live in!