Merit Medical Systems, the Nasdaq-listed medical device maker based in South Jordan, Utah, has acquired Solo Pace, Inc., a Minneapolis company that makes temporary pacing systems used during transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). Merit announced the deal on October 29, 2026, alongside its third-quarter results.
Merit acquired all of Solo Pace's remaining shares on October 13, 2026, for purchase consideration of about $45 million, according to its press release, which it also filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Merit already held about 18% of the company.
Solo Pace's products will become part of Merit's Cardiac Therapies business. Merit had been the exclusive distributor of Solo Pace's technology before the acquisition.
What Solo Pace built
TAVR replaces a narrowed aortic valve through a catheter instead of open-heart surgery. Merit says more than 100,000 of the procedures are performed each year in the United States. During the procedure, doctors temporarily pace the heart very fast so that the new valve can be placed accurately.
Solo Pace makes two products for this step. SOLO PACE CONTROL is an external pulse generator. SOLO PACE FUSION is a single-use, sterile kit that combines a guide wire, left ventricular pacing and patient grounding in one device. Merit says the kit is designed to give stable pacing through setup and valve delivery, and to support operator-specific protocols, automated pace-capture checks and sterile remote-control operation.
According to Merit, the systems simplify pacing setup, reduce variation between procedures and can help cut communication-related pacing errors and the risk of vascular complications. FUSION received FDA 510(k) clearance on April 17, 2025, and was released commercially on March 31, 2026.
“This acquisition expands our Cardiac Therapies platform and further strengthens our position in the structural heart market”
A staged deal
Merit built its position step by step. Under agreements signed between January 2023 and December 2025 it paid a total of $5 million for shares in Solo Pace, an option to buy the rest of the company once certain commercial milestones were met, and exclusive rights to distribute the products once they were on the market.
Merit expects the acquisition to have no material effect on its 2026 revenue or earnings. For 2027 it expects the deal to add slightly to non-GAAP net income and earnings per share, after about $1.5 million of lost interest income and excluding about $3.2 million of non-cash, one-off transaction costs. On a GAAP basis it expects the deal to reduce 2027 earnings slightly before adding to them in later years. Parr Brown Gee & Loveless was Merit's legal adviser.
Solo Pace was founded by David V. Daniels, an interventional cardiologist. Merit did not disclose Solo Pace's headcount, its revenue or how much other outside funding it had raised.
What the companies said
Merit chief executive Martha G. Aronson said the acquisition expands the company's Cardiac Therapies platform and strengthens its position in the structural heart market. She said clinicians had responded well to the products through the distribution partnership, and that Merit plans to use its commercial, clinical and physician-education teams to expand adoption in the United States and, over time, worldwide.
Daniels said that seeing physicians adopt the technology and its effect on procedural efficiency had been gratifying, and that with Merit taking the lead he expected the products to reach more patients.
Why Merit is buying
Merit said the purchase supports its strategy of expanding its structural heart portfolio, with a focus on technologies that simplify procedural workflows and support physicians performing transcatheter valve procedures. It described temporary pacing as a critical part of TAVR, because it supports accurate valve deployment and helps doctors carry out the procedure safely and efficiently.
Buying the company outright gives Merit the products themselves rather than only distribution rights. Merit said SOLO PACE FUSION is designed to work with the existing SOLO PACE CONTROL generator, and that the systems were built specifically for TAVR and other transcatheter heart valve procedures. Pulse 2.0 also reported the purchase, giving the same price and the same October 13 closing date.
