Accelrys Acquires Qumas for $50M

Accelrys has bought Qumas, a provider of cloud-based and on-premise enterprise compliance software for regulatory and quality operations in regulated industries including the life sciences, for $50 million.
Accelrys said that the added intellectual property extends its informatics portfolio by providing document and process management compliance solutions that improve its ability to help customers reduce regulatory risks and quality costs, improve compliance, and increase operational efficiency across their product development lifecyles.

Operating from offices in Cork, Ireland and New Jersey, Qumas provides an electronic document management application with related research and development submission and QA documentation packages based on customer and industry requirements and best practices.
Its business process management applications include corrective action/preventive action, audit, change control, deviation, complaint, and more. For the last two decades, the company has been involved in integrating content, processes, people, and systems into enterprise compliance programs that eliminate the cost and complexity associated with managing paper-based, disparate or legacy document management applications.

As part of an integrated solution, Accelrys said that applications such as the Accelrys Electronic Lab Notebook, Accelrys Laboratory Information Management System, Accelrys Lab Execution System, and Accelrys Discoverant for Operational Intelligence will function as data sources and integration points for the compliance and quality business systems that Qumas’ solutions manage.
“Integrating QUMAS solutions into the Accelrys product portfolio will provide a single-vendor [scientific innovation lifecycle management] solution that is already in high demand for product lifecycle management into the critical compliance and quality management arena for science-based process industries,” Accelrys President and CEO Max Carnecchia, said in a statement.
It also enables Qumas to extend its customer base in other business areas currently served by Accelrys, Qumas CEO Kevin O’Leary added.

Under the terms of the agreement, in consideration for acquiring all of the outstanding capital stock of Qumas, Accelrys agreed to pay to the company’s shareholders a total of approximately $50 million in cash, subject to working capital and other adjustments. The transaction is expected to be neutral to Accelrys’ non-GAAP earnings per share for the year ending Dec. 31, 2013, with a $1 million to $2 million non-GAAP revenue contribution.

Qumas had revenues of $15.2 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2012.
This is Accelrys’ second acquisition for the year. In January, the company bought Vialis, a systems integration firm headquartered in Liestal, Switzerland, for up to $10 million.
In its most recent financial report, Accelrys posted a 1 percent bump in third quarter revenues for a total of $40.9 million for the three months ended Sept 30, compared to $40.5 million for the same period a year ago.
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Accelrys Adds Another Scientific Software Company to Its Portfolio

Courtesy Xconomy

After merging with Symyx Technologies in 2010, acquiring Contur Sofware in 2011, and buying VelQuest earlier this year, San Diego scientific software developer Accelrys says today it is buying Aegis Analytical.

Accelrys is paying $30 million in cash for Aegis, a company based in Lafayette, CO, (near Boulder) that makes software used to monitor biotech product development and manufacturing processes. In a statement today, Accelrys says the deal helps to further expand its suite of software used to manage the life cycle of innovation among pharmaceutical companies and in other industries.

Aegis has about 40 full-time and contract employees, and “the idea is to keep the business in Boulder and fairly intact,” Accelrys CFO Michael Piraino told me during a phone interview earlier this afternoon. Aegis CEO Robert Di Scipio will stay with the merged company through the transition to new ownership.

About two-thirds of Accelrys’ customers are pharmaceutical and biotech companies, according to Piraino. The company also provides its software-as-a-service to customers specializing in oil & gas development, cleantech, food and beverage, and other industries.

The company’s statement quotes Accelrys CEO Max Carnecchia as saying, “The industries we serve are undergoing significant changes, requiring them to move from a status quo approach to one that breaks down the barriers to operational excellence, innovation productivity and global competitiveness.”

Accelrys says companies that operate in regulated environments are finding it difficult to manage complex manufacturing in real-time because they’re relying on paper notebooks and other outmoded tools to monitor R&D, quality assurance, and other industrial processes.

Accelrys says addressing such problems requires a global and holistic approach that enables businesses to predict, prevent, and solve problems throughout product development, quality control, and manufacturing process. Accelrys says that without the kind of cloud-based software it provides, companies risk compromising the quality of their products, falling out of regulatory compliance, slowing operations and increasing commercialization costs. Bruce V. Bigelow is the editor of Xconomy San Diego. You can e-mail him at bbigelow@xconomy.com

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