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To: tuck who wrote (1549)	11/24/2003 10:03:38 PM
From: tuck	Respond to of 1784

>>HOLLISTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 24, 2003--Harvard Bioscience, Inc., (Nasdaq: HBIO - News) today announced the acquisition by Harvard Bioscience of certain assets and liabilities of the one-dimensional electrophoresis business of Amersham Biosciences (SF) Corp., including the Hoefer brand name under which the acquired business has generally been conducted, for approximately $5.3 million in cash. Harvard Bioscience has the rights to apply the Hoefer brand across its offerings, including its existing lines of electrophoresis products. Amersham Biosciences will retain its two-dimensional electrophoresis product lines which include the Multiphor, IPGPhor and the DALT systems as well as a range of consumables for electrophoresis. These products will be sold under the Amersham Biosciences brand. Harvard Bioscience and Amersham Biosciences have also entered into a long-term, global distribution agreement for a minimum of five years with an option to renew longer-term, whereby Amersham Biosciences will continue to distribute and support one-dimensional electrophoresis products manufactured by Harvard Bioscience under the Amersham Biosciences brand. Additionally, Harvard Bioscience will develop new products for Amersham Biosciences, with Amersham Biosciences committing to certain purchase volumes during the first three years. "This agreement reflects our strategy of focusing our development and manufacturing areas of Discovery Systems where we see the most promise. This agreement enables us to focus our proteomics area on sample preparation, protein expression and protein identification as part of the Ettan design for integrated, high-throughput proteomics, while also providing a more cost effective way of offering our customers access to one-dimensional electrophoresis offerings," said Andrew Carr, Ph.D., President Discovery Systems, Amersham Biosciences. The new Hoefer business will be managed for Harvard Bioscience by Hugh Douglas, who has been with the Hoefer product lines since 1979. Mr. Douglas will report to David Parr, Managing Director of Harvard Bioscience's Biochrom business. David Parr commented, "Hoefer is a well known name in electrophoresis. Buying this business strengthens both us and Amersham. We get continued distribution through Amersham plus the chance to build our own business under the Hoefer name, while Amersham gets a flow of existing and new products to sell to their customer base without the need to invest in manufacturing and R&D. I expect to work closely with Hugh and his team to build Hoefer into a leading molecular biology business." David Green, President of Harvard Bioscience added, "Hoefer is another good example of both the acquisition and partnership parts of our growth strategy. We seek to acquire franchises with good acceptance in the scientific community that we can then grow by developing new products and expanding distribution channels. In addition, the continued and expanded partnership with Amersham gives us distribution reach we could not achieve on our own and gives Amersham a resource for new product development that is complementary to Amersham's own efforts in the electrophoresis field." Acquisition and partnership are two parts of Harvard Bioscience's three-part growth strategy of innovation, acquisition and partnership. This three-part growth strategy is what has driven Harvard Bioscience's compounded annual growth rate of revenues at approximately 40% and compounded annual growth rate of pro-forma earnings per share at approximately 24% over the last six years. Harvard Bioscience expects this acquisition to be accretive to its pro-forma earnings per share. However, due to the timing of the transaction the impact is expected to be minimal in 2003. In 2004 Harvard Bioscience expects the new Hoefer business to add revenues of approximately $7 million and pro-forma earnings per share of approximately $.01-.02. Editor's Notes: About Electrophoresis Electrophoresis is a widely used life science research technique to separate and purify both nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and proteins. The Hoefer business was founded in 1967 by Peter and Jacqueline Hoefer and has long been recognized as an innovator in electrophoresis products. The US market for electrophoresis apparatus, gels and reagents is estimated at $112m (Phortech International 2000/2001). << snip Cheers Tuck