A Medical Device Daily
Mercury Computer Systems (Chelmsford, Massachusetts) reported it has agreed to purchase Sohard (Ferth, Germany) for roughly EUR 19 million ($23.22 million).
Sohard develops software solutions for medical imaging systems, hardware and firmware for commercial embedded systems and software intelligence applications via professional services.
The acquisition, subject to closing conditions, is expected to close in 3Q05.
Sohard produces a web-based image distribution picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) solution enabling users to transfer, visualize and edit medical image data throughout the hospital. It reports more than 950 web-based PACS installations and more than 50,000 users of its software worldwide.
“The acquisition of Sohard will broaden our end-to-end medical OEM solution portfolio from scanner control, reconstruction, acceleration, and advanced 3D visualization, through image distribution and archive software,” said Jay Bertelli, president and CEO of Mercury Computer. “The combination is expected to enable Mercury to establish a leadership position in the high-growth, OEM web-based PACS solutions and imaging scanner markets.”
The revenue run rate for Sohard is about $10 million per year, and the company is “modestly profitable,” according to Mercury. The acquisition is expected to be accretive within 12 months.
Mercury Computer is a provider of embedded, real-time digital signal and image processing computer systems. Its systems are used in state medical diagnostic imaging devices including MRI, PET and digital X-ray, and in semiconductor imaging applications including photomask generation and wafer inspection.
The Sage Healthcare Group (Branchburg, New Jersey) has been appointed to divest, to an unnamed “global partner,” the assets for a new non-invasive technology for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, developed by Microprevention Tests (Cambridge UK).
CRC is the third leading malignancy worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. Roughly 5% to 6% of the population will contract CRC. If detected early, CRC is up to 90% curable. However, the current level of routine screenings in the U.S. is less than one-third of the eligible population due to the expense and public’s poor acceptance with invasive procedures (colonoscopy and sigmoidoscopy) and the widely known high levels of false positives and negatives of non-invasive fecal occult blood test (FOBT).
The frequency of CRC screening is even less elsewhere and so there is a huge unmet market and no present cost-effective screening for such a high incidence of cancer, according to the company.
In other dealmaking activity:
• Sybron Dental Specialties (Orange, California), a manufacturer of products for the dental profession – including the specialty markets of endodontics, implantology, and orthodontics – reported that its Ormco subsidiary acquired all of the stock of privately held Oraltronics Dental Implant Technology (Bremen, Germany), a company that manufactures dental implants.
Oraltronics had 2004 revenues of about $10 million.
Sybron said the purchase was made using its existing cash and is expected to be accretive within the first year of operations.
“Oraltronics represents an ideal addition to our subsidiary Innova Lifesciences [Toronto], which we acquired last October as a means of entering the rapidly growing dental implant market,” said Floyd Pickrell Jr., CEO of Sybron. The company reportedly paid cash for Innova’s shares, in a deal valued at about $43.7 million (Medical Device Daily, Aug. 25, 2004).