Rumors have been swirling for more than a year, but a Siemens Healthineers C-suite executive has declared the company’s ultrasound business alive, well and amply resourced.
“There is no sale process for the ultrasound division,” CFO Jochen Schmitz said in Germany June 28, Reuters is reporting. “We already repositioned the business at the end of last year and are investing heavily in it.”
Reuters recalls Schmitz’s boss, Siemens CEO Bernd Montag, seeming to signal interest last year in shopping the “relatively small-scale business,” which had sales of about $421 million in 2021.
“We can be in the [ultrasound] business, but we don’t have to be,” Montag said at the time.
Reuters also cites sources among investment bankers who said a publicly traded Siemens subsidiary had “brought in bankers from JPMorgan to review bids that had come in for the division.”
Also in 2021, Bloomberg quoted anonymous sources who said Siemens was seeking to sell its ultrasound business for a figure in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
A bit further back, in October 2020, Siemens Healthineers announced a 10-year contract with a large German healthcare system by which Siemens would deliver and maintain imaging equipment, including ultrasound units.
This week’s Reuters news brief is here.
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Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.