Baxter still has its sights set on acquiring its fellow medtech manufacturer Hill-Rom, with an upsized offer that could now reach as high as $10 billion, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The news follows accounts from Bloomberg earlier this summer that Hill-Rom had rebuffed Baxter’s previous offer of $144 per share, which would have totaled about $9.6 billion.
Now, the companies could come to terms for about $150 per share before the end of this week, the WSJ said, citing people familiar with the deal.
The latest information has sent Hill-Rom’s stock up by about 10% since the markets closed Friday to just over $147. The company saw a similar boost in late July after the Bloomberg news report.
Baxter’s stock saw more modest gains today of about 2%, to just under $76, after its stock fell about 5% after the reports of its previous rejection.
Hill-Rom produces a range of medical devices and hospital equipment, from beds for intensive care units and long-term care to vital sign monitors and wearable electrocardiogram hardware. Most recently, the company launched a networking suite designed for the operating room, offering digital patient information and live video feeds during procedures.
For the third quarter of its 2021 fiscal year, Hill-Rom reported worldwide revenues of $718 million—a decline of 6% compared to the same three months in 2020 but a 13% gain when excluding last year’s ICU bed sales and ventilators in response to COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Baxter has been working on a company-wide digital transformation effort—spanning both the development of new digital health tools for patient care and the modernization of its internal business processes—and recently expanded a multi-year agreement with Amazon Web Services and its cloud offerings to help complete the job.
Baxter saw its second-quarter revenues increase 14% year-over-year to $3.1 billion and said it expects to see about an 8% growth in annual sales by the end of 2021.
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