Thermo Fisher Scientific is expanding its life sciences portfolio by acquiring a division of Solventum that provides technologies and products used in the manufacturing of biologic drugs.
Under deal terms announced Tuesday, Thermo Fisher will pay $4.1 billion in cash for Solventum’s Purification and Filtration, a business segment that has about 2,500 employees throughout the world. Waltham, Massachusetts-based Thermo Fisher described this Solventum business as complementary to its own bioproduction business. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year.
Solventum is relatively young, having spun out of 3M last April as a standalone, publicly traded company. Its Purification and Filtration business generated $721 million in sales for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2024, down 1.5% compared to the same period in 2023, according to the St. Paul, Minnesota-based company’s most recent financial report. Thermo Fisher said 2024 revenue for this segment was about $1 billion. In addition to providing technologies used in the production of biologic drugs, the Solventum unit’s filters and membranes are also used in medical technologies and industrial applications.
According to Solventum CEO Brian Hanson, the sale of Purification and Filtration is part of a broader strategic realignment of his company. The sale will net about $3.4 billion in net proceeds, which Solventum plans to use to pay down debt.
Upon the deal’s close, Purification and Filtration will go from being the smallest of Solventum’s four business segments by revenue to being part of Thermo Fisher’s largest — Life Sciences Solutions. This business segment provides reagents, instruments, and consumables used in medical research, drug and vaccine R&D, and diagnosis of disease. Life Sciences Solutions generated $9.6 billion in revenue for Thermo Fisher in 2024, down 3.4% from the prior year.
In a prepared statement, Thermo Fisher CEO Marc Casper said Solventum’s Purification and Filtration business “will expand and add differentiated capabilities to our bioprocessing portfolio to better serve our customers in this rapidly growing market.”
Leerink Partners analyst Puneet Souda noted that about 25% of Thermo Fisher’s business is in bioprocessing. Acquiring the Solventum business bolsters its existing bioprocessing franchise, which has primarily focused on cell culture media and single-use plastics, he said in a research note. The deal also enables Thermo Fisher to strongly enter filtration in both downstream and upstream plastics, where Danaher and Repligen are already well established, Souda added.
Thermo Fisher has been a willing dealmaker when it comes to diversifying its offerings to the life sciences industry. Last year, it closed the $3.1 billion acquisition of Olink, a company that provides proteomics analysis tools and services for drug research. That deal followed the $912 million buyout of CorEvitas and the $2.6 billion acquisition of The Binding Site.
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