In a blog posted on Monday (10 September), Valencia, Spain-headquartered Kanteron confirmed it had sent Agfa-Gevaert’s board of directors a non-binding indication of interest for the acquisition of all of the company’s shares “by way of a voluntary conditional public takeover offer of Kanteron Systems to all shareholders of Agfa-Gevaert”.

Agfa said today that, following a review of the blog post, the non-binding letter of intent and the public information on Kanteron, its management has decided not to engage in discussions with the business at this stage.

In Kanteron’s blog post, the company’s chief executive Jorge Cortell had said: “Agfa Healthcare business unit revenues have been stagnant in the last few years.

“However, a deal with Kanteron would allow Agfa to tap into our leading-edge technology, particularly in pathology and genomics, enabling Agfa to take the lead in the new clinical information systems for precision medicine market, which is a huge and disruptive long-term growth opportunity.

“Some of Agfa’s largest international distributors have already signed up with Kanteron Systems. It’s time we give the whole Agfa family access to our innovative technology.”

German medical software company CompuGroup had approached the group in October 2016 to indicate its own interest in a potential acquisition but those discussions ended two months later.

Agfa’s share price had taken an upwards trajectory from €3.75 (£3.34) on Monday to a high of €4.15 this morning, immediately following the company’s announcement. It had settled down to €3.89 at the time of writing.

Agfa achieved a turnover of €2.44bn in 2017. Last month it said its revenue and gross profit both declined in Q2 2018, with sales of €559m (£498m) down 10% on Q2 2017.