Munich Leukaemia Laboratory (MLL), a specialist founder-owned lab in Germany, is for sale with a potential €480m price tag. A source says it’s one of the “most modern genetics labs” in the world and is likely to sell to one of the large lab groups.

MLL employs around 200 people and specialises in leukaemia diagnostics and research. It has not responded to HBI’s requests for comment on reports that founders have appointed Goldman Sachs to lead a sale. HBI understands it likely to be valued at around 11-12x EBITDA of €40m.

“It’s also the largest specialised leukaemia lab in Europe and the technical global leader in leukaemia,” our source, who works in the German diagnostics market, says. “It’s one of the most modern genetics labs worldwide and the technical global leader in leukaemia. It’s also the largest lab specialised in leukaemia in Europe. It’s a great asset.”

The company is owned by co-founders Torsten and Claudia Haferlach and Wolfgang Kern, who are reportedly considering the sale off the back of historically high prices in the sector. “Torsten will want to continue his legacy so is more likely to sell it to Sonic, Medicover or Unilabs. It fits into their genetics and histopathology strategy. Centogene probably won’t buy, it’s too expensive.”

The group has digitalised data from at least 600,000 patient cases including diagnoses, findings and image data. Torsten has reportedly been keen to leverage that data for clinical purposes and the lab even starting building its own algorithms five years ago after pulling out of a partnership with IBM. It spent tens of millions sequencing the genome of 5,000 leukaemia patients and has at least 1.2m frozen samples in its biobank.

“We know exactly which leukaemia we are investigating. Now we want to look where all this can be found in the genome,” he told Handelsblatt in 2018, adding: “We want to give more recommendations for targeted therapies.”

Our Analysis: Specialist founder-owned labs in Germany nearly always go to Sonic so this would be our bet. The sale is also a sign that M&A in the lab market is finally starting to pick up again post-COVID. Synlab is going up for IPO itself but we’ve seen very limited consolidation since the pandemic hit (an exception is Biogroup’s acquisition of CMA).