GE closes $20b sale of BioPharma to Danaher

General Electric (NYSE:GE) announced that it completed the sale of its BioPharma business to Danaher (NYSE:DHR) for net proceeds totaling approximately $20 billion.

Boston-based GE said in a news release that, under the agreeement, it received a total consideration worth $21.4 billion, with $21 billion in cash along with Danaher’s assumption of certain pension liabilities. After accounting for taxes, fees and factored receivable balances, the proceeds for GE totaled about $20 billion.

“Completing the sale of BioPharma represents a critical milestone on our multi-year transformation, fortifying our considerable sources to de-risk our balance sheet and continue to solidify our financial position,” GE chairman & CEO Larry Culp said in the release. “I am proud of the teams for completing this transaction amidst a great deal of global change. As we go forward, GE retains one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, using our global scale and technical leadership to deliver better outcomes and more capacity to a world striving for precision health.”

In a February 2019 news release confirming the agreement of the purchase, Danaher said that GE BioPharma was expected to generate revenue of approximately $3.2 billion in 2019, with approximately 75% of those revenues considered recurring.

Danaher intends to establish BioPharma as a stand-alone operating company within its $6.5 billion life sciences segment, along with its Pall, Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, SCIEX, Leica Microsystems, Molecular Devices, Phenomenex and IDT businesses.

“GE Biopharma is renowned for providing best-in-class bioprocessing technologies and solutions,” Danaher president & CEO Thomas Joyce said at that time. “This acquisition will bring a talented and passionate team as well as a highly innovative, industry-leading product suite to our Life Sciences portfolio, providing an excellent complement to our current biologics workflow solutions.”