DANAHER: $21.4 BILLION GE BIOPHARMA DEAL MOVES FORWARD WHILE ENVISTA DIVESTITURE IS COMPLETED
by John G. Baresky on 12/19/19
Published on 12/19/19, updated 2/23/20
Danaher achieves critical European regulatory approval milestone in acquisition of GE biopharma business unit
Danaher ( NYSE: DHW.WD ) is closing out 2019 at full speed with its attention squarely centered on 2020. The European Union has approved their acquisition of GE Biopharma which completes a pivotal stage of their quest to buy one of GE's most prestigious and profitable corporate divisions. To satisfy the European Commission and other government regulatory requirements, Danaher will sell off these operating groups:
- MolDev FortéBio molecular characterization business located in Fremont, California and Shanghai, China
- Pall Biotech chromatography hardware unit operating from Portsmouth, United Kingdom and Westborough, Massachusetts
- Pall Biotech chromatography resins company operating out of Cergy, France
- Pall Biotech Single-Use Tangential Flow Filtration ("SUT TFF") systems located in Portsmouth, United Kingdom and Westborough, Massachusetts plus its stainless-steel Hollow-Fibre TFF (“SS HF TFF”) systems operations in Shanghai, China
- Pall Biotech SoloHill microcarriers and particle validation standards unit based in Farmington Hills, Michigan
With addition of GE biopharma assets, Danaher's business will engage multiple bioprocessing industry sectors
As a combined organization, Danaher and the acquired assets of GE Biopharma Business will be a worldwide leader in products and services aligned with bioprocessing including consumable single-use technology products such as bioreactors, mixers or connectors plus cell culture media and sera, microcarriers, bioprocessing filtration, molecular characterization, microscopy, high-content screening and laboratory filtration. Its enormous portfolio will enable it to embrace the needs of multiple customer stakeholders.
These include academic institutions and commercial research organizations plus an array of companies involved with research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of products prepared from or used by biological systems such as biopharmaceutical developers and manufacturers, cosmetics, food, fuel, livestock feed and other biochemical product and service providers.
Danaher corporate profile
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Danaher organization is generally defined through three business groups:
- Environmental & applied solutions
- Diagnostics
- Life sciences
With the addition of the GE biopharma assets, Danaher’s abilities in each of the 3 will be significantly multiplied and likely reach into new business sectors as well. Excluding the addition of the GE biopharma assets and their revenue potential, Danaher already generates just under $20 billion in annual sales.
Danaher will be disrupting the competitive balance in their business sectors
These top 10 Danaher rivals plus other firms will be sizing up the new competitive threats Danaher is formulating:
- Agilent Technologies ( NYSE: A )
- Bruker Corporation ( NASDAQ: BRKR )
- Harvard Bioscience ( NASDAQ: HBIO )
- Illumina ( NASDAQ: ILMN )
- Lonza Group ( OTCMKTS: LZAGF )
- PerkinElmer ( NYSE: PKI )
- Roche ( OTCMKTS: RHHBY )
- Thermo Fisher Scientific ( NYSE: TMO )
- VWR / Avantor ( privately held )
- Waters Corporation ( NYSE: WAT )
Another strategic corporate development milestone at Danaher is the completion of its dental product assets into a fully independent spinoff known as Envista Holding Corporation which was launched in 2018. Danaher recently accepted an aggregate of 22,921,984 shares of Danaher common stock in exchange for all of its 127,868,000 shares of Envista common stock. Danaher is now completely separated from Envista as it no longer possesses any voting rights or economic interest in the newly formed company.
Danaher spinoff formed a global professional dental product leader
Overlooked in the broader sense of the investor and dental healthcare communities, through spinning off its dental assets to form Envista ( NYSE: NVST ) Danaher launched a professional dental products giant comprised of:
- 3 primary business units: KaVo Kerr, Nobel Biocare, Ormco
- Over 12,000 employees
- More than 30 dental brands and product franchises
- $2.8 billion in annual sales generated from over 150 nations
Danaher's organizational and revenue goal plans for 2020
Moving forward, Danaher will be busy with the arrangements to integrate its new assets and aligning their revenue producing capabilities according to their annual business plan. At the same time, they will be shopping the 4 Pall business units and MolDev FortéBio to interested parties. 2020 will unveil a significantly larger and somewhat redefined Danaher that customers, competitors and investors will be paying much more attention to in the future.
