Rancho Santa Margarita-based medical device maker Applied Medical Resources Corp. has added to its local operations with what appears to be the priciest deal for a South Orange County industrial building in more than a year.
The privately held company said it recently bought a 125,800-square-foot industrial building a few blocks from its headquarters.
The building, at 30200 Avenida De Las Banderas, sold for $21.3 million, or about $170 per square foot, according to real estate sources.
Applied Medical had been leasing space at the building for more than a year.
The company is the county’s fourth-largest medical device maker by workers, with about 1,200 local employees. It makes a range of devices here, including ones used in laparoscopic surgeries as well as catheters, clamps, stents and guide wires.
The buy is the first big local real estate acquisition in several years for the company, which last made large additions to its headquarters and set up a separate campus in Irvine through three deals struck from 2004 to 2006.
The company’s using the new building for a combination of manufacturing and laboratory space, according to spokeswoman Mary Jo Stegwell
Newport Beach’s Carson Cos., an industrial developer whose portfolio includes buildings in Southern California and Texas, sold the building, according to records.
Prior tenants at the building, near the Foothill (241) Toll Road, included Rancho Santa Margarita-based computer memory products maker Viking Components Inc., which was bought by San Jose-based Sanmina-SCI Corp. in 2002.
The buy brings Applied Medical’s space in Rancho Santa Margarita to about 375,000 square feet, in a combination of office and industrial space. It is the city’s largest employer.
In 2006, the company bought a 244,000-square-foot industrial building and a 27,000-square-foot office building in the Irvine Spectrum, where it opened a second campus and roughly doubled its space in the county.
That deal was valued at $45 million.
Earlier, Applied Medical bought its headquarters complex and built a plant for making advanced plastics and metals. It also added a building to its headquarters and manufacturing facilities.
The latest addition comes as the company has increased employment by about a third in the past two years, thanks to improving sales.
Sales
Sales for the 12 months through June were $255 million, up 23% from a year earlier and a 54% jump from two years earlier.
The company expects about $280 million in revenue for all 2010.
Chief Executive Said Hilal told the Business Journal last year that economic duress among hospitals has helped drive Applied Medical’s growth.
Hospital buyers are seeking less expensive products and others are looking to diversify from the big names—such as Johnson & Johnson and Covidien Ltd.—that dominate the industry, according to Hilal, a former executive at defunct American Hospital Supply Corp.
High Water Mark
The $21.3 million sales price would appear to be the largest industrial sale in the county in about six months, and the largest deal in South County in at least a year, according to brokerage data.
The company was given the option to buy the building when it signed a lease for the space more than a year ago, according to Stegwell. The company’s done a lot of upgrades to the building in the meantime, she said.
Other Deals
Among other large industrial deals of late, Irvine’s Sares-Regis Group last summer paid a special servicer $20 million, or about $71 per square foot, for the debt tied to a 281,548-square-feet warehouse in Anaheim. The property was previously owned by Galleria Inc, a locally based importer of lawn, garden and other household products.
That building has since been leased by Sares-Regis to beer distributor Straub Distributing Co., in a 15-year, $37.5 million deal.
Also last summer, Paper Mart, a Commerce-based packaging supply company, paid $22.2 million—or about $90 per square foot—for a 246,732-square-foot distribution building in Orange.
Paper Mart moved its headquarters to the building, which previously was the headquarters for alcohol distributor, Young’s Market Co., which now is based in Tustin.
