Analogic goes private in sale worth $1.1B
It's not yet known what will happen when new private equity owners take over the
Analogic first announced a "strategic review process" last June. That process culminated
The firm, an affiliate of the "health care-dedicated investment firm"
Analogic will become the 17th company in Altaris' portfolio of companies that design and make medical products. Altaris manages
The deal is expected to close midyear. What it means for Analogic employees in the long run is not clear.
"What I've been hearing is it is going to be business as usual over there and they are going to continue to operate in the city of
Analogic employs 1,500 people worldwide, and more than 800 in
It's
Bettencourt called the company "a great community partner" for its support of city programs and initiatives over the years, including
Few changes now
For the short-term, there should be few changes on the jobs front.
"First of all, we're at a very short period before the closing and under the agreement there are stipulations that we not do something in that regard," said President and CEO
"There will not be extraordinary measures and I hope you have enough faith in the outcome of the company that that is unnecessary," he said.
"My sense is that people are relieved that it is out in the open," Namaroff said.
The company has trimmed jobs locally in recent years.
In 2015, under former President and CEO
In fiscal 2014, the company took pre-tax charges of
Once Altaris takes over, sometime in mid-2018, Namaroff said Analogic will no longer need a board of directors, because Altaris has its own board.
It will no longer report its earnings and financials to
A benefit for shareholders?
The company's stock price had been stagnant over the last four years, Namaroff said. That, in part, drove the board to seek a way to add value for its shareholders.
Analogic's chairman,
"Given the increasingly competitive markets that we serve, we have been focused on the need to achieve greater scale in order to generate sustained profitable growth," Bailey said in the statement.
The company had three options: break up into three separate parts, remain a standalone company or sell. Breaking up the company might prove risky and expensive, and the company could not stand on its own because it needed to scale up to compete, it said.
Whether the deal was good for shareholders depends on how you look at it, said
For the long-term investor, the deal at
But the company's stock traded for
Analogic being taken private is part of a wider trend of companies going private that started in 2010, Kudrimoti said.
In fact, the number of publicly traded companies has gone down in recent years, from 8,000 in the mid-1990s to 4,000 today.
There are reasons for the drop other than companies going private. When one public company buys another public company, the number of companies listed on
Kudrimoti said there are advantages to Analogic no longer being a public company.
"They can focus on their main, core business," he said.
Namaroff said Altaris plans to retain Analogic's name and presence in the marketplace.
Analogic was founded in 1967 by famed engineer and inventor
The company first designed and made analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, digital panel instruments, and computer peripheral analog-to-digital subsystems. In the 1970s, the company's technology pioneered the development of the computed tomography scanner.
In 1993, it purchased an ultrasound company, BK Medical, which is now
Analogic expanded into airport security in 1997, with a luggage scanning system. The company says its imaging technologies can also be found in magnetic resonance imaging, digital mammography systems and aviation threat detection systems.
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