Danaher Q4: Life science demand and single-use growth attest Pall buy
In September, Danaher closed its $14bn (€13bn) acquisition of filtration, separation and purification technologies specialist Pall.
The addition was described as the start of a new area for the firm, with CEO Thomas Joyce calling the biopharma market “one of the most attractive markets from a sustainable growth perspective in the years to come.”
And for its first full quarter incorporating Pall, sales in its Life Sciences & Diagnostics business – which includes the upstream and downstream tech firm – rose 34% year-on-year to $2.7bn, while operating profit in the sector saw a 12% rise to $372m compared to the fourth quarter 2014.
“For the four months that we owned the business on a constant-currency basis, Pall grew about 4% on a combined basis,” Danaher’s CFO Daniel Comas told investors on a conference call, adding this was due to “a very strong growth on the Life Science side.”
CEO Joyce added his company was “very, very happy” with the integration of Pall and envisioned continued progress and growth rates on the Life Science side.
“We're also seeing outstanding growth in single-use technologies, which are a key part and a key growth driver of the biopharma segment of the Life Science business as time goes on.”
Evercore ISI analyst Ross Muken described Pall’s performance in a note as “getting off to a reasonable start,” but was slightly hampered by a slowdown in the industrial portion of business
The Pall takeover marked Danaher’s entry into the bioprocessing technology space alongside companies like Thermo Fisher and Merck Millipore.
The firm has also announced it is set to spin out its industrial technologies business, under the name Fortive, and refocus itself as a healthcare instruments and services firm.
