Colorado Springs' Pyxant Labs to be acquired by French investment firm

Pyxant Labs, a Colorado Springs research lab that specializes in biological testing for the pharmaceutical industry, will be sold next month to French private equity investment firm ArchiMed in a deal that will grow Pyxant while keeping it in the Springs.

As part of the deal with ArchiMed, Pyxant is acquiring a Salt Lake City research lab from LabCorp’s Covance unit, Pyxant CEO and founder Maurice Gaubatz said. The transaction will create the nation’s largest independent specialty lab operation focused on testing samples from clinical trial subjects to ensure the safety and effectiveness of new drugs under development. ArchiMed also is acquiring ImaBiotech, a French company specializing in cellular imaging. Terms of the two transactions weren’t disclosed.

“This gives us additional resources to grow in a more rapid manner,” Gaubatz said.

“When this transaction is completed by the end of June, we will end up with a 180-employee company that was put together and will be operated by Pyxant Labs. While there are divisions of large companies that do what we do, we will be the largest company in the U.S. dedicated solely to this market.”

Pyxant employs 50. The combined organization will be based in Colorado Springs and employees at each of the companies will remain, including Pyxant’s management team of Gaubatz; Jim Wilfahrt, who joined the company as a president a year ago; and Jarrod Langley, Pyxant’s executive director of finance. Wilfahrt had spent his career before joining Pyxant with the Salt Lake City lab included in the deal.

Pyxant management began working on the transaction about a year ago and was selected as the winning bidder by LabCorp for the Salt Lake City operation after the company decided to spin it off, Gaubatz said. The operation was started in 1994 by Tandem Labs, which was acquired by LabCorp in 2008 and merged with LabCorp’s Covance pharmaceutical testing unit in 2016.

Pyxant is owned by a group of Colorado “angel” investors, wealthy individuals that are early financial backers of startups with real estate brokers Jack and Becky Gloriod as the largest shareholders. Becky Gloriod said the couple will double their investment, which was made in several transactions starting in 2004, when the ArchiMed deal is completed and could potentially get an even bigger return depending on Pyxant’s future financial performance.

ArchiMed, based in the eastern French city of Lyon, manages nearly $2.4 billion invested in four funds. The company, founded in 2014, owns 17 health care companies, including Milwaukee-based Ad-Tech Medical, which makes electrodes and other equipment for neurosurgery; Florida-based ActiGraph, which makes hardware and software for academic studies on sleep and physical activity, and Ohio-based Namsa, a medical device testing firm.

Gaubatz started Pyxant just weeks before the technology stock bubble burst in early 2000. After working for 15 years at Dow Chemical, he used his savings and a loan guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration to buy Colorado Analytical Research and Development., which he renamed Pyxant. The company had no clients or revenue because the previous owner was about to retire and was winding down the business, so Gaubatz began cold-calling potential customers.

Pyxant won customers by agreeing to defer payments, working through holidays and hustling to complete tests quicker for customers, which then included pesticide and drug manufacturers, to ensure their products were safe and complied with federal rules. The company raised money in small amounts from angel investors, but all of those deals left Pyxant with an unwieldy 85 shareholders, complicating further fundraising efforts.

Gaubatz recapitalized the company in 2014 by creating a class of stock that would control the company and help him raise more than $1 million to finance Pyxant’s expansion into the clinical toxicology market — testing urine, oral fluids and tissue samples for pharmaceuticals and other drugs, a market the company has since exited.

The company grew rapidly last year, testing blood and tissue samples from four of the 16 companies working on therapies or vaccines for the COVID-19 virus.