Boston Scientific closes $3.7B Axonics deal after lengthy review

Dive Brief:

  • Boston Scientific officially closed its multibillion-dollar acquisition of Axonics roughly 10 months after announcing the proposal.
  • The deal is valued at $71 per share, representing $3.7 billion in equity value and $3.3 billion in enterprise value, according to the Friday announcement. Boston Scientific expects the transaction to be immaterial to adjusted earnings per share in 2024 and 2025 and accretive after.
  • Meghan Scanlon, Boston Scientific’s president of urology, said in the announcement that Axonics’ portfolio “enables us to expand into sacral neuromodulation, a high-growth adjacency for our Urology business.”

Dive Insight:

Boston Scientific unveiled the Axonics deal in January, kicking off what has been a fairly busy year of medtech dealmaking. At the time, Boston Scientific expected to complete the purchase in the first half of the year. However, the deal was held up for months after the Federal Trade Commission requested more information.

While the acquisition remained under review, Boston Scientific continued its spending spree. In September, the company closed its acquisition of Silk Road Medical for $1.28 billion in equity value. The deal, announced in June, was also delayed after Boston Scientific resubmitted its merger filing to give the FTC additional review time. Then in November, Boston Scientific agreed to acquire Cortex, which makes diagnostic imaging tools to identify signs of atrial fibrillation, for an undisclosed amount.

The Axonics acquisition is one of the medtech industry’s largest in 2024, and it adds a fast-growing unit to Boston Scientific, which has already seen solid growth so far this year.

Axonics manufactures neuromodulation devices to treat urinary and bowel dysfunction. When the deal was announced, Boston Scientific forecasted that Axonics would generate about $336 million in revenue in 2023, representing year-over-year growth of 34%; the company ultimately matched the projection.

Axonics is already outpacing its 2023 revenue mark. It brought in revenue of $322.2 million in the first three quarters of 2024, compared with $256.6 million in the year-ago period. The firm is still struggling to turn a profit, however, reporting a net loss of $12.2 million over the first nine months of the year. Axonics reported a net loss of $6.1 million in 2023 and $59.7 million in 2022.