Universal Display Acquires CRO Adesis

Universal Display Corporation has acquired Adesis, a contract research organization (CRO) with 43 employees specializing in organic and organometallic synthetic research, development and commercialization, for $36 million. Adesis is a critical technology vendor to companies in the pharmaceutical, fine chemical, biomaterials, and catalyst industries, and has worked with Universal Display over the last few years to help advance and accelerate a number of Universal Display’s product offerings.

“This acquisition is part of our strategic growth plan. We believe that it will provide additional highly-skilled resources to further advance our initiatives for the development and delivery of next-generation proprietary emissive material systems in the rapidly evolving OLED industry,” said Steven Abramson, president and chief executive officer, Universal Display. “Moreover, we expect it to enable us to leverage our twenty-plus years of experience in developing and commercializing cutting-edge chemistry technologies to help expand Adesis’ businesses across its end-markets including pharma, biotech and catalysis.”

“We are very excited to become part of UDC and build additional synergies between both companies, and further enhance the growth of UDC’s OLED leadership,” said Andrew Cottone, president, Adesis. “In addition, we anticipate that Adesis will benefit from UDC’s financial and business acumen to better support our clients with world-class technology and expertise, and reinforce our positioning for continued growth as a specialty chemical CRO.”

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016. Adesis will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Universal Display. Mr. Cottone will continue as the president of Adesis, and Mr. Abramson will become the chairman of the board of Adesis.