Trending
Illumina to exit portion of Foster City life science campus
Biotech firm aims to reduce expenses by more than $100M this year
Illumina, a biotechnology firm based in Foster City, plans to exit part of its 360,000-square-foot campus in the San Mateo County city and shed some of its other real estate in San Diego.
The firm is weighing options for the entire Foster City campus, a property developed by Blackstone’s BioMed Realty, according to the San Francisco Business Times. The entire campus is valued at about $186 million.
In San Diego, the firm is exiting its entire 625,000-square-foot research facility — another BioMed property, completed in 2017.
Illumina is cutting a number of employees, resulting in a charge of between $25 million and $35 million.
All up, the company and its subsidiaries lease 540,000 square feet across the Bay Area.
The cost cuts came after a bitter proxy fight between CEO Francis DeSouza and investor Carl Icahn. Though DeSouza survived the proxy fight, shareholders voted to oust Chairman John Thompson.
In April, Illumina said it would cut more than $100 million in costs over the next year, in an effort to improve shareholder morale.
Illumina is the latest firm to downsize in Silicon Valley. Last month, Google listed about 1.4 million square feet across Mountain View and Sunnyvale up for sublease.
— Isabella Farr