Abbott Laboratories announces $21 billion deal to buy Cologuard-maker Exact Sciences

Abbott Laboratories announced a $21 billion deal Thursday morning to acquire Exact Sciences, the maker of Cologuard — its largest acquisition in a decade.

The deal will allow Abbott — which makes medical tests, baby formula and continuous glucose monitors, among other products — to enter the cancer testing space. Exact Sciences focuses on early cancer detection and personalized treatments, and is perhaps best known for making Cologaurd, an at-home colon cancer screening test.

“Exact Sciences’ innovation, its strong brand and customer-focused execution are unrivaled in the cancer diagnostics space, and its presence and strengths are complementary to our own,” said Robert B. Ford, chairman and Abbott CEO, in a news release. “We’re excited to bring Exact Sciences’ people and know-how into Abbott so that together, we can take on the global challenge of cancer.”

Exact Sciences is expected to generate more than $3 billion in revenue this year, and once it joins Abbott, Abbott’s diagnostics sales are expected to exceed $12 billion a year.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approval. Abbott’s stock was down 1.7% Thursday morning after the deal was announced.

Abbott is paying $105 per common share in cash, a 51% premium to Exact Sciences’ closing price of $69.68 on Nov. 18, a day before Bloomberg reported that the two companies were nearing a deal.

Exact Sciences’ headquarters is in Madison, Wis., and it plans to maintain its prescence there once the acquisition closes. Abbott has 114,000 employees worldwide, and is headquartered in the north suburbs.

Raymond James analysts wrote in a note Wednesday, before the deal was formally announced, that the acquisition will help Abbott grow, and the deal could help kickstart Abbott’s diagnostics business, which has lagged this year. But questions remain about how Abbott plans to make Exact Sciences more efficient, they wrote. On Thursday, Raymond James analyst Andrew Cooper wrote that the deal would be the largest diagnostics acquisition to date.

The acquisition could help “revitalize” Abbott’s diagnostics business, wrote an analyst Joshua Jennings for TD Cowen. Abbott could also help to extend Cologuard’s reach internationally because Abbott already has relationships in areas of the world that Exact Sciences “has lacked the commercial scale, reimbursement infrastructure, and political capital to penetrate,” he wrote.

With the acquisition, Abbott would move into a rapidly growing area of interest. In addition to making Cologuard, Exact Sciences also makes Cancerguard, which can help detect 50 types of cancer through a blood test. Such tests have been gaining momentum as a way to help detect cancers early, though experts caution that they cannot be used to diagnose cancer, and are not meant to replace routine screenings.

It’s expected that there will be more than 2 million new cancer diagnoses in the U.S. this year, though the overall rate of deaths from cancer has been declining because of earlier detection, better treatments and fewer people smoking, according to the American Cancer Society.