Are Nanosphere Shareholders Getting Enough With This New Offer?

Nanosphere Inc. (NASDAQ: NSPH) started the week off with a bang on Monday, following an update on an acquisition offer. Luminex Corp. (NASDAQ: LMNX) is raising the stakes for its buyout offer on Nanosphere. The offering was previously for $1.35 per share, but Luminex has tacked on another 35 cents to make the offer now worth $1.70 per share.

It’s worth noting that this increase was in response to an unsolicited third-party offer for Nanosphere at $1.50 per share.

At the $1.70 price point, the entire transaction is valued at roughly $77 million, a premium of 30% from Friday’s closing price of $1.31. Compared to the 50-day ($0.86) and 200-day ($1.27) moving averages, the deal has premiums of 98% and 34%, respectively.

This deal also represents about 9% of Luminex’s total market cap of $872 million.

Looking ahead, consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters predict that Nanosphere will have $28.0 million in revenues for the 2016 full year and of $38.8 million for the following year.
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Nanosphere is enhancing medicine through targeted molecular diagnostics that result in earlier disease detection, optimal patient treatment and improved health care economics. The company’s versatile technology platform, the Verigene System, enables clinicians to rapidly detect the most complex, costly and deadly infectious diseases through a low-cost and simple-to-use multiplexed diagnostic test.

So far in 2016, Nanosphere shares have outperformed the broad markets, with the stock up about 115% (not including Monday’s move). However, over the past 52 weeks the stock is down 65%.

Shares of Nanosphere were last seen trading up nearly 27% at $1.66, with a consensus analyst price target of $1.50 and a 52-week trading range of $0.48 to $3.90.

Luminex shares were trading up 1.4% at $20.14. The consensus price target is $21.00 and the 52-week range is $16.16 to $22.85.

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