Beckman Coulter Inc., the Brea-based medical-testing equipment maker, is continuing to pay off for parent Danaher Corp.
Danaher, a Washington, D.C.-based conglomerate, recently posted a 43% increase in first-quarter earnings, driven mainly by income derived from Beckman. Danaher bought Beckman for $6.8 billion last year.
The company said sales from its life sciences and diagnostics unit, which includes Beckman, shot up 147% in the quarter to $1.54 billion. Operating profit from the unit was up 128% to $205.9 million.
None of Danaher’s other business units had revenue growth above 9%.
Danaher had to do some heavy lifting in order to change Beckman into an efficient, high-margin unit. Beckman had several product recalls and was cited for inadequate quality controls by the Food and Drug Administration.
Such issues led to Beckman’s sale.
“While there is a lot of work ahead, we are happy with what the team has accomplished in the past nine months,” said H. Lawrence Culp, Danaher’s chief executive, on a call with analysts and investors.
Danaher is seeing “excellent progress on the cost side” with Beckman, and improvements are starting to show up in financial results, Culp said.
Danaher’s business lines include medical, science, calibration devices, hand tools and defense equipment. The company has worked to move away from cyclical industrial product lines to higher-margin, high-growth medical and science businesses.
Danaher also owns Sybron Dental Specialties Inc., an Orange-based maker of dental products.
Moody’s Investor’s Service recently raised its rating on Danaher to “stable” from “negative,” mentioning progress in reducing funded debt after buying Beckman last year.
Danaher’s been able to “realize significant cost synergies within Beckman Coulter,” Moody’s said. “Beckman is benefiting from Danaher management discipline.”
Monitor Study
Irvine-based patient-monitors company Masimo Corp. said a European clinical study showed its rainbow acoustic monitoring device showed it had higher patient tolerance and a similar accuracy in measuring respiration rates for extubated, post-surgical patients when compared to capnometry.
Capnometry involves the measurement of carbon dioxide in respired gases using a face mask.
The study was conducted at the University Hospital of Poitiers, France, and evaluated 52 post-surgical patients staying in the facility’s post-anesthesia care unit.
Researchers said the rainbow’s acoustic sensor was well-tolerated while the face mask was removed by eight patients, leading to discontinuation in two patients.
“The device appears to be well-tolerated and no more subject to error than capnometry,” researchers said.
Results from the study appear in the May edition of the British Journal of Anaesthesia.
Valve Study
Medtronic Inc., a medical device maker with about 700 local workers, said data from its CoreValve Advance clinical trial showed women and men received similar benefits from implanting the less-invasive replacement heart valves.
The study evaluated patients at high risk from surgical aortic valve replacements and it found survival rates were nearly identical between genders with no statistical differences in 30-day and six-month, all-cause mortality.
It also found only 2.9% of participants had strokes within 30 days of implantation, even though female patients experienced statistically higher rate of strokes, major vascular complications and major bleeding.
Advance is a large clinical trial involving 1,015 patients consecutively treated at 44 medical centers experienced in transcatheter aortic valve implantation in 12 countries.
CoreValve competes with Edwards Sapien, a less-invasive offering from Irvine-based Edwards Lifesciences Corp., in Europe. CoreValve is still roughly two years away from being available in the U.S., however.
Bits and Pieces
Nihon Kohden America, a Foothill Ranch-based patient monitoring unit of Nihon Kohden Corp. in Japan, introduced Qualnomics, which it called “the first social community dedicated to fostering discussion about the inseparable nature of healthcare quality and its impact on hospital economics.” … Quality Systems Inc., an Irvine healthcare software maker, said its NextGen Healthcare Information Systems LLC subsidiary signed a deal with Barrington Orthopedic Specialists, a multispecialty medical group in suburban Chicago.
NextGen will provide its NextGen Ambulatory electronic health record and other products to Barrington, which has 15 doctors and 35 ancillary providers.
