ICU Medical has placed itself in the running to serve as the new corporate home of Medtronic’s patient monitoring and hospital ventilator businesses, according to a report from Reuters.
The news wire said ICU, with private equity backing from Linden Capital Partners, has made it through to the second round of bidding—for an acquisition deal that may end up totaling between $8 billion and $9 billion.
ICU will be competing against other suitors including GE HealthCare, the Carlyle Group and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, each of which is making offers, according to Reuters.
Accounts of potential buyers have swirled since late last year, when Bloomberg reported that Siemens was demonstrating interest in the Medtronic spinouts, as was GE HealthCare. At that time, sources estimated a deal price that topped $7 billion.
Medtronic first announced it would spin off the two divisions in October 2022, allowing it to focus more on its cardiovascular, diabetes and surgery business units.
Among the devices heading for the exit are the medtech giant’s Puritan Bennett brand of ventilators, which were once in high demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as its connected bedside monitors, pulse oximetry sensors and anesthesia hardware. Altogether, they’ve collected $2.2 billion in annual sales.
According to Reuters, Medtronic will still consider launching the spinouts as an independent outfit if the budding bidding war doesn’t escalate high enough.
ICU, meanwhile, posted one of the largest medtech acquisitions of the last year as it snapped up Smiths Medical for $2.4 billion.
In 2021, Smiths announced that it would sell its device division—with a portfolio of infusion pumps and vascular access tools—to TA Associates for $2 billion. However, ICU put down an offer of $400 million more, a payment toward its stated goal of growing into a leading IV therapy company and supporting its previous lines of critical care, anesthesia and patient monitoring hardware.
More recently, Medtronic this month confirmed that it would be continuing to slim down its corporate bulk in other areas: namely, by incorporating its surgical robotics and surgical innovations units together under an overarching, $6 billion surgical segment. The combination quietly took effect Feb. 1 and is aimed at capitalizing on “one of the most attractive markets in all of healthcare—a market that is forecasted to nearly double over the next 10 years," the company told Fierce Medtech.
And last year, Medtronic announced it would spin off its kidney care business as part of a joint venture with the dialysis services giant DaVita.