by
Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | February 14, 2017
Siemens Healthineers may wind up publicly listed in the U.S. and not Europe.
This would let the German industrial giant take advantage of higher valuations than found in Europe for its $15 billion health care business.
"We don't have a final view on this yet, but we are looking at it very closely,"
Reuters reported Joe Kaeser, CEO of Siemens AG, told Euro am Sonntag.
The move is part of the major refocusing of the company. "I can imagine a future in which we give investors the opportunity to invest not just in the companies Siemens Healthineers or Siemens-Gamesa renewable energy, but also in a high-performing digital industry business," he told the weekly.
He also advised that there might be a dividend boost for shareholders on the way.
"We have just raised our profit guidance for 2017 and have increased our dividend three years in a row. I wouldn't end such a streak for no reason," he stated.
The Healthineers might go public in late 2017,
as HCB News reported in late January, when sources told Reuters that bankers were being contacted to help with the IPO.
"Goldman Sachs will very likely emerge as one of the global coordinators of the Healthineers IPO," an unnamed source told Reuters at the time.
"Health care is one of the most attractive businesses, if not the most attractive we have in the company," Kaeser said when announcing the spinoff of Healthineers in 2016, adding that "we want to focus it more."
The move had been in the works since 2014, when Siemens created the health care component as a "company within the company." This set up an entity able to respond quickly to the enormous changes in the global health care market.
"The public listing is now the next step in further strengthening Siemens Healthineers in Siemens for the future," he stated, stressing that the move came during a period when the Healthineers already held "a leading position" and the company had boosted its market share.
"The public listing is a key lever for reaching our strategic goal of being THE enabler for health care providers worldwide," said Healthineers CEO Bernd Montag, adding that "greater entrepreneurial freedom and agility will allow us to help shape the development of the global health care market and the growth strategies of successful health care providers. We'll enable our customers to participate successfully in the trends toward consolidation, industrialization and holistic health management with a high degree of clinical relevance, efficient workflows and financial value added."
Also in 2016, the Healthineers made a major move at its Walpole, Massachusetts, facility, pouring $300 million into it and adding 700 new jobs.
“The expansion of the Walpole facility fits into the strategic growth plans for the company and allows us to increase our manufacturing footprint in the United States, the largest health care market in the world,” said Montag. “The laboratory instruments and reagents developed and manufactured at the Siemens Healthineers Walpole facility impact patients and health care providers across the globe.”
Part of the plan is for the plant to make the assays used by the immunoassay module of the Atellica Solution, which the company hopes will leapfrog the competition and become a market leader.
