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25 Mar 2025
Potential $430M merger expected to complete later this year; should make femtosecond laser approach more cost-effective.
Alcon, the multinational pharmaceuticals company specializing in eye care, has agreed a deal to acquire cataract laser surgery pioneer Lensar.
The deal, valued at up to $430 million, will expand Alcon’s existing femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery (FLACS) offering with what Lensar has previously hailed as its “revolutionary” ALLY system.
Back in 2022 Lensar’s CEO Nick Curtis said he was confident that many physicians who were yet to adopt femtosecond lasers in cataract treatment would migrate to the technology following US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
Since then, the Nasdaq-listed company has installed more than 130 of the ALLY systems, with more than a million procedures completed across all of its products, to give it a market share of 20 per cent in the US, according to figures from analyst firm Market Scope.
Meanwhile in February 2023 Alcon paid rival Johnson & Johnson nearly $200 million to settle a pending lawsuit surrounding FLACS and set up a cross-licensing deal.
Procedure target
According to the terms of the agreement, Alcon will purchase all outstanding shares of Lensar for $14 per share in cash, implying an aggregate cost of $356 million.
And if Lensar hits a target of 614,000 cumulative procedures in the two years starting January 1, 2026, that total will rise to approximately $430 million.
Alcon’s CEO David Endicott said of the pending deal: “We are excited for the opportunity to bring Lensar’s unique next-generation technologies and intellectual property into our innovative, market-leading equipment portfolio.
“By leveraging our global footprint, we have the opportunity to deliver the benefits of advanced femtosecond laser technology to many more surgeons around the world and continue to improve efficiency in cataract surgery.”
Based on technology initially developed for “LASIK” vision correction, FLACS is now a well-established technique that uses ultrafast bursts of photons to fragment the clouded lens that is characteristic of a cataract patient.
This enables physicians to remove and replace the lens without heating up any surrounding tissue, and reduces the need for ultrasound to aid lens removal. The approach also places less stress on tissues within the eye, reducing the likelihood of an inflammatory response.
Dual-pulsed laser
However, according to Lensar many physicians now use femtosecond laser systems that are more than a decade old, and questions have been raised over the cost-effectiveness of FLACS versus earlier approaches. Lensar has claimed previously that its ALLY system provides a number of technological upgrades and better patient outcomes, as well as faster patient throughput that should improve that cost-effectiveness.
Advances are said to include robotic operation, a smaller footprint, enhanced ergonomics, superior imaging, advanced astigmatism management tools, and a dual-pulsed laser design that reduces procedure times by as much as two-thirds.
Last month CEO Curtis told investors that Lensar had installed 80 of the ALLY systems in 2024, increasing the installed base to more than 135 units overall.
Thanks to that momentum and an increasing number of procedures, which also generates sales revenues for the Orlando, Florida, firm, Lensar was able to post full-year sales of $53.5 million, up 27 per cent on the total in 2023.
And although that still resulted in an annual operating loss of $10.7 million, Curtis remarked that the placement of 31 ALLY systems in the closing quarter of 2024 represented “an incredibly strong conclusion to a successful year”.
“Worldwide procedure volumes grew 24 per cent in 2024 to nearly 170,000, with full-year US procedure volumes increasing 21 per cent year-over-year,” he added.
Chapter 11 recovery
Also citing figures from Market Scope, Alcon says that more than 5 million cataract procedures now take place in the US annually, with approximately 32 million worldwide - indicating the potential for more femtosecond laser penetration.
Lensar has been working on the technology for more than 15 years, and raised significant equity and debt funding in 2012 and 2013 ahead of a planned clinical ramp.
But while early rivals LenSx, Technolas, and OptiMedica secured buyouts from Alcon, Bausch+Lomb, and Abbott respectively, Lensar filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2016.
Curtis, who was the firm’s CEO at the time, insisted that there was still room for Lensar’s product in the market, pointing to the ageing global population.
PDL Biopharma, which provided Lensar with a $60 million loan in 2013, subsequently took ownership of the company before spinning it out and onto the Nasdaq in October 2020.
“Thanks to the continued passion and commitment of Lensar associates, customers, and our investors, we are excited about the potential Alcon has to advance the industry in next-generation laser technology for refractive cataract surgery, furthering our and their mission to meet the needs of both surgeons and their cataract patients,” said Curtis in a release announcing the planned acquisition.
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