Accelrys announces acquisition of VelQuest

Jan 3 2012

Accelrys, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACCL), a leading scientific enterprise research and development software and services company, today announced that it has acquired privately-held VelQuest Corporation for $35 million in an all-cash transaction. VelQuest is the leader in paperless lab execution systems supporting current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) for FDA-regulated industries including pharmaceuticals and biotechnology organizations. Accelrys' acquisition of VelQuest extends Accelrys' software portfolio into the downstream pharmaceutical development Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) space, offering significant productivity improvements, faster cycle times, lower operational costs and reduced compliance risks for regulated life sciences organizations.

All key members of the VelQuest management team have been retained, and VelQuest's Ken Rapp, along with his team, will continue to lead Accelrys' efforts in paperless analytical and quality operations for the life sciences.

"With the acquisition of VelQuest, Accelrys continues to execute on its strategy of providing a broad, flexible solution set for customers that depend on scientific innovation to bring new products from lab to market more quickly and efficiently," said Accelrys President and Chief Executive Officer Max Carnecchia. "VelQuest's strong products and proven domain expertise in compliance-intensive laboratory operations expand our ability to meet our life sciences customers' critical needs in late stage development, quality control and production."

VelQuest's Procedure Execution Management products (SmartLab™, SmartBatch™ and gmpLIMS™) extend Accelrys' reach beyond Research into the QA/QC phases of product development, speeding time to innovation with up to ten times reduction in compliance risk. VelQuest systems have been designed for analysts, reviewers and supervisors to manage the entire process of executing laboratory test procedures in a paperless environment while maintaining cGMP compliance requirements.

In addition to complementing Accelrys Pipeline Pilot and Symyx Notebook by Accelrys, the VelQuest systems significantly reduce resources needed for paperless analytical and quality operations, including analyst data acquisition and documentation, data review, supervisor approval, QA investigations, audits and releases. Some integration has already taken place between the VelQuest offerings and existing Accelrys solutions, opening the door to further synergies and downstream opportunities as a result of this acquisition. The acquisition also creates the ability to take VelQuest solutions beyond life sciences by leveraging Accelrys' existing market presence and relationships in other industries.

"Joining forces with Accelrys is a real win for the many life sciences organizations we serve," said Ken Rapp, president and chief executive officer of VelQuest Corporation. "As part of a company of Accelrys' size and scale, we are in a better position to serve the data management needs of our customers. VelQuest will take advantage of an increased investment in product development and a customer support and deployment organization that is well suited to address the needs of large scale, global organizations. In addition, with Accelrys' broad market reach, the utilization of VelQuest's products beyond life sciences offers significant opportunities. Most importantly, the inherent synergies between Accelrys and VelQuest products and their critical roles in the development to commercialization phases of the pharmaceutical R&D process offer customers a comprehensive, single-source informatics offering along the entire lab-to-plant value chain."