Fujifilm to Acquire SonoSite (SONO, GE)
Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp. has agreed to acquire medical equipment maker SonoSite Inc. (NASDAQ: SONO) for $995 million, including debt. The offer is $54/share, a premium of about 28% over SonoSite’s closing price yesterday. More than 14 million shares of…
Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp. has agreed to acquire medical equipment maker SonoSite Inc. (NASDAQ: SONO) for $995 million, including debt. The offer is $54/share, a premium of about 28% over SonoSite’s closing price yesterday. More than 14 million shares of SonoSite have traded today, compared with a daily average of just over 200,000.
Fujifilm hopes to use SonoSite’s 37% market share in portable ultrasound equipment eventually to surpass the GE Healthcare unit of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) as the world’s leading maker of ultrasound devices. Other medical equipment makers include Philips Healthcare and Siemens Healthcare.
SonoSite is the world’s leading maker of bedside and point-of-care ultrasound equipment, and is a solid addition to Fujifilm’s stable of products as the Japanese company seeks to diversity out of its struggling film and camera businesses.
SonoSite shares are trading today at $53.55, after posting a new 52-week high of $53.58. The previous high was $44.00.
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Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.
He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.
