Philips to buy US IT co Visicu for $430 mn

AMSTERDAM: Philips Electronics is buying US IT and service provider Visicu for about $430 million, or $12 per share, to boost its medical products business, it said on Tuesday. Excluding $130 million in cash on Visicu’s balance sheet, Philips said its cash offer represents an enterprise value of $300 million for Baltimore-based Visicu.

Philips, the world’s biggest lighting maker, a top three hospital equipment maker and Europe’s biggest consumer electronics producer, said it expects to close the deal in the first quarter of 2008.

“Making these investments we believe will drive further growth in our patient monitoring business,” Steve Rusckowski, chief executive of Philips Healthcare, said in a statement. Visicu’s board of directors is backing the offer, Philips said. Philips has said it aims to strengthen its medical systems unit via acquisitions. In October, it warned the division would likely miss 2007 targets due to a US regulatory change.

The unit, which competes with GE Healthcare and Siemens Medical Solutions, is key to Philip’s strategy of becoming a higher margin company. Visicu, a maker of systems that tracks patients’ conditions in intensive care units, made $30.2 million in revenue last year, up 65 % from 2005. Its eICU system allows health workers to keep track of patients’ vital signs from a central monitoring station.