Philips To Acquire Visicu for $430 Million

Royal Philips Electronics NV announced this morning in Europe that it intends to acquire ICU monitoring systems vendor Visicu for $430 million in cash, strengthening Philips' position in patient monitoring. The company's offer of $12 per share represents a 35% premium to yesterday's closing price.

Baltimore-based Visicu earned $9 million on sales of $36 million over the past year. In the 20 months since its IPO, Visicu shares have dropped from nearly $25 to below $9. Its board has approved the acquisition and recommends that its shareholders approve it.

From the CEO of Philips Healthcare: "Today's deal builds on Philips’ announcement two weeks ago that we’re acquiring another clinical IT company, Emergin. Philips is a market leader in patient monitoring systems in the hospital, so we know the challenges our customers face - rising patient numbers, staff shortages and concerns about patient safety. By investing in clinical IT solutions like those offered by Visicu and Emergin, we believe we can offer customers more attractive patient monitoring solutions that improve hospital productivity as well as patient outcomes. So making these investments we believe will drive further growth in our patient monitoring business."