SFW Capital Partners Completes Sale of Essen BioScience to Sartorius Group AG for $320 million

RYE, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– SFW Capital Partners, a specialized private equity firm that invests in
mid-sized companies providing analytical tools and related services with
a particular focus on instrumentation, software, information, and
workflow solutions, today announced it has completed the sale of Essen
BioScience Inc., a pioneer and leader in the field of cell-based assays
and instrumentation used for life sciences research, to Sartorius Group
AG (FWB: SRT), a leading partner to the biopharmaceutical industry and
laboratories, for $320 million.

SFW acquired a controlling interest in Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Essen
in May 2014. SFW recruited Brett Williams to become Essen’s CEO and,
throughout the investment, supported Brett and the Essen management team
in executing a wide range of strategic, organizational, and operating
initiatives to drive significant organic revenue growth and the adoption
of Essen’s highly innovative IncuCyte live cell analysis platform. With
SFW’s support, Essen made substantial investments in the development of
new applications for the IncuCyte instrument that incorporated
integrated instrumentation, software, reagents and consumables, and in
enhancing its sales, marketing, service and field support capabilities.
Through these investments, Essen achieved significant growth in revenues
and profitability, and substantially transformed its organization,
strategy and market position.

“Essen’s differentiated instrumentation, long-standing customer
relationships, deep application expertise and significant opportunities
for organic growth were a great fit with SFW’s focus on investing in and
supporting the transformational growth, development and sustainable
leadership position of highly innovative providers of analytical
instrumentation and related products,” said Roger Freeman, a Co-Founder
and Partner of SFW. “We are very pleased to have had the opportunity to
partner closely with Essen’s co-founders, Brett Williams and the entire
Essen management team.”

“We are incredibly proud of the transformational investments and
improvements we enacted with the support and guidance of SFW, which
strengthened Essen’s organic growth and leading innovative position in
cell-based life science research, while positioning us for our next
stage of growth,” said Brett Williams, President and Chief Executive
Officer, Essen BioScience. “We are excited to become a part of Sartorius
and build on our industry-leading cell analytics solutions. This is not
only a great opportunity to build upon Essen’s market-leading position,
but also to continue the development and introduction of transformative
solutions for life sciences. In addition, we believe that the
combination with Sartorius will provide exceptional opportunities for
sustained growth and development for our employees, customers and
business partners.”

About SFW Capital Partners

SFW Capital Partners is a leading investor in analytical tools and
related services companies, including providers of analytical
instrumentation, software, information, and related business services.
SFW is a specialized private equity firm that exclusively invests where
its principals’ 20+ years of knowledge of the relevant business models,
technology, competitive dynamics and service requirements gives it a
unique ability to support management teams in growing their companies
and building value. For more information, please visit www.sfwcap.com.

About Essen BioScience, Inc.

Founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1996, Essen BioScience develops and
manufactures instruments, software, reagents and consumables which
enable researchers to remotely image and quantitate a wide variety of
cellular processes over time. The IncuCyte® System, is a real-time
quantitative live-cell analysis platform that enables visualization and
quantification of cell behavior over time by automatically gathering and
analyzing images around the clock within a standard laboratory
incubator. The system allows researchers to make time-lapsed fully
kinetic measurements from living cells over days and weeks thus
providing insight into active biological processes in real time.

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