General Electric Co.'s (GE) spinout of its Healthcare business in an IPO has been a highly anticipated med-tech industry event for 2019. But now all that is back into play. The Boston-based conglomerate has opted to sell its Biopharma business for $21.4 billion to Danaher Corp. That Biopharma unit accounted for about 15 percent, or about $3 billion, of the almost $20 billion in 2018 Healthcare revenues.
General Electric Co.'s (GE) spinout of its Healthcare business in an IPO has been a highly anticipated med-tech industry event for 2019. But now all that is back into play. The Boston-based conglomerate has opted to sell its Biopharma business for $21.4 billion to Danaher Corp. That Biopharma unit accounted for about 15 percent, or about $3 billion, of the almost $20 billion in 2018 Healthcare revenues.
In the last year, Dexcom Inc., of San Diego, has seen its market cap grow exponentially – from less than $5 billion in February 2018 to roughly $12.5 billion now. That followed about three years of stagnant valuation for the continuous glucose monitor (CGM) player. The strength of the recent Dexcom run-up has been on the thesis of widespread U.S. market penetration, particularly as it became the first CGM player to gain Medicare reimbursement.
Tandem Diabetes Care Inc. saw its shares climb almost 20 percent this week, just as it became the first company to have a product classified in a new FDA category: Alternate Controller Enabled Infusion Pumps (ACE pumps).
Avedro Inc. squeaked out the door with its IPO. It managed to raise $70 million, rather than the $75 million it had previously proposed, after pricing at the bottom of its $14 to $16 per share range. The ophthalmic med-tech company held the number of shares steady at the proposed 5 million. Still, shares (NASDAQ:AVDR) slipped by about 12 percent to $12.25 in early trading.
The rumors of an acquisition of Auris Health Inc. by New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson (J&J) have been around for a few weeks, since right around the latter's annual earnings report on Jan. 22. Now the conglomerate has confirmed that its Ethicon Inc. subsidiary will acquire Redwood City, Calif.-based Auris for $3.4 billion in cash and up to an additional $2.35 billion in undisclosed milestones.
Edwards Lifesciences Corp. will acquire micro-cap Cas Medical Systems Inc. (Casmed) for about $100 million. The pair were partnered already on 510(k) clearance-pending cable and software to connect Casmed's Fore-Sight brain tissue oxygenation monitor to Edwards' Hemosphere hemodynamic monitoring platform for surgery and critical care.
Biodirection Inc. has won Breakthrough Device Designation from the U.S. FDA for its Tbit system for the prediction of positive computerized tomography (CT) scans following traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Boston, Mass.-based company expects to shepherd an emergency room-oriented diagnostic through the 510(k) de novo process and onto the market potentially by the end of the first quarter of 2020.
