San Diego, CA 4/2/12; San Diego, CA 4/2/12; San Diego, CA 4/3/12; Basel, Switzerland 4/3/12; San Diego, CA 4/9/12; Basel, Switzerland 4/11/12; Basel, Switzerland 4/12/12—Roche announced on April 12 that it is maintaining its $51 per share unsolicited offer for Illumina (see IBO 3/31/12), despite the unanimous vote by Illumina’s Board to reject the offer. Roche CEO Severin Schwan commented that “our offer price is full, fair and extremely attractive by every conceivable financial metric. Illumina has to date not provided any quantitative support for their aggressive growth assumptions.” Roche stated that it would consider raising the offer if Illumina would engage in negotiations and provide information supporting a higher offer. Illumina rejected the offer on April 2, with President and CEO Jay Flatley writing in a letter to Roche Chairman Franz Humer that the offer “dramatically undervalues Illumina and does not adequately reflect Illumina’s singular position in an industry poised for extraordinary growth.” On the same day, Illumina announced preliminary first-quarter revenues of approximately $270 million and annualized HiSeq consumable pull-through of approximately $300,000 per instrument. On April 6 and April 10, Illumina announced that the proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services, Egan-Jones Ratings Company, and Glass, Lewis & Co. supported its position.

Following Roche April 12 statement regarding the offer, Illumina shares closed down 5.8% to $49.51, which is below Roche’s offer price. Illumina’s annual shareholder meeting is scheduled for April 16, which should give some indication of the attractiveness of Roche’s offer to shareholders. Roche Diagnostics reported on April 12 that sales for its Applied Science’s Genomic Analysis products, which include sales of 454 Life Sciences sequencers, declined 15% in the first quarter.