In its second acquisition of 2023—and its largest in several years—Swedish devicemaker Getinge has set its sights on High Purity New England, which churns out a range of products used throughout the drug discovery and development processes.
High Purity’s portfolio includes custom-made single-use assemblies, lab pumps, sensors, bioreactor systems, chromatography columns and other tools and technologies used by biopharma clients to produce novel therapeutics. The company, which counts around 150 employees, is based in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and dates back to 2002.
According to Getinge’s Wednesday announcement, it’ll pay 1.3 billion Swedish kronor (about $120 million) in an upfront cash payment to acquire all outstanding shares of High Purity. After that, if the business hits certain agreed-upon net revenue goals between 2023 and 2025, Getinge will pay out up to another 1.85 billion kronor ($170 million) in milestone payments through 2026.
“This acquisition is another step in Getinge Life Science’s strategic journey to further expand our presence in the biopharma segment,” Eric Honroth, president of Getinge’s life science business, said in the announcement. “High Purity New England has in recent years successfully supplied the industry with dedicated single-use assemblies. We are delighted to join forces with HPNE providing our customers with comprehensive and innovative solutions for bioprocessing applications.”
The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of this year, and Getinge said in the announcement it’s not expecting the purchase to have a material impact on its bottom line in 2023, nor will it add any material integration costs to the ledger either this year or next. Getinge plans to have fully integrated High Purity’s business into its own by the end of 2024.
For 2022, Getinge took in net sales of nearly 28.3 billion kronor ($2.6 billion), according to its full-year earnings report (PDF), which represented a more than 5% drop compared to 2021’s earnings on an organic basis. This year, however, the company has forecasted that its net sales will grow by between 2% and 5% organically.
Getinge has already completed one acquisition this year. In March, it announced the purchase of Florida-based Ultra Clean Systems, a maker of ultrasonic technologies for cleaning surgical instruments. Getinge put down 170 million kronor ($16 million) in cash for the buyout and noted, once again, that it was not expecting the acquisition to have any noticeable impact on its operating profit or earnings per share in 2023.
Meanwhile, outside of its M&A moves, Getinge has faced a series of setbacks in its own product line. Already this year, its Cardiosave intra-aortic balloon pumps—which help inflate and deflate balloons inserted into the aorta to help blood flow normally—have been the subject of two recalls, both of which were given the FDA’s most serious Class I rating.
The pumps have also temporarily lost their CE mark approval in Europe, after regulators identified issues with Getinge’s “risk management, post-market surveillance and vigilance” related to the pump. The suspension—the company’s second this year—was handed down at the end of March and gave Getinge three months to regain compliance with the necessary standards.