Waters Corp. (NYSE: WAT) said Feb. 9, 2026 that it has completed its combination with BD’s Biosciences & Diagnostic Solutions businesses, completing a tax-efficient Reverse Morris Trust transaction first announced in July 2025 and widely described as a roughly $17.5B deal.
With the close, legacy Waters shareholders own about 60.8% of the combined company (fully diluted) and BD shareholders about 39.2%. BD shareholders will receive approximately 0.135 shares of Waters common stock for each share of BD common stock held as of the Feb. 5, 2026 record date, with cash in lieu of fractional shares. Barclays served as financial advisor to Waters and Kirkland & Ellis as lead legal counsel.
Waters also unveiled a new operating structure built around four commercial divisions:
- Waters Analytical Sciences includes separations science and physical molecular characterization, including LC instruments, chemistry consumables, and mass spectrometry, UV, light scattering and particle analysis detection.
- Waters Biosciences will focus on cellular sorting and analysis, including flow cytometry instruments and reagents and single-cell multiomics solutions (formerly BD Biosciences).
- Waters Advanced Diagnostics will focus on high-value diagnostic workflows in regulated clinical settings, spanning microbiology, molecular, LC-MS-based multiplex testing, automation and point-of-care (formerly BD Diagnostic Solutions plus Waters’ clinical business).
- Waters Materials Sciences includes materials characterization via thermal analysis, rheology and microcalorimetry, serving batteries, electronics and pharma applications (formerly TA Instruments division).
In an earnings presentation released the same day, Waters disclosed calendar-year 2025 combined revenue of about $6.4B across the four units: Analytical Sciences at $2.533B, Advanced Diagnostics at $2.082B, Biosciences at $1.424B, and Materials Sciences at $0.352B.
The company additionally named genome scientist Claire M. Fraser, Ph.D. to its board, expanding it to 11 members. Fraser founded the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2007 and served as its director, with three decades of experience managing large research institutes.
“Our combination with BD’s Biosciences and Diagnostic Solutions businesses marks a pivotal moment for Waters, bringing together world-class scientific expertise across chemistry, physics, and biology,” CEO Udit Batra said in the announcement.
In investor communications tied to the transaction, Waters has positioned the combined company as a scaled life-science tools and diagnostics player with around 16,000 employees, $6.5B pro forma 2025 revenue, and a commitment to invest about 10% of product sales in R&D—a level it argues will help accelerate instrument and assay innovation in regulated, high-volume testing environments.
Waters has a long history of expanding through acquisition, including deals that built out materials characterization and analytical capabilities such as TA Instruments and Micromass, and more recently Wyatt Technology (closed 2023) to deepen bioanalytical characterization.
The BD transaction also lands amid broader consolidation in life-science tools. Prior reporting indicated BD had held discussions with potential buyers including Thermo Fisher and Danaher before settling on the Waters structure. Recent rival moves include Thermo Fisher’s completed acquisition of Olink (2024) and its announced agreement to buy Clario (expected mid-2026 close), alongside Danaher’s completed acquisition of Abcam and Sartorius’ Polyplus closing.
