Thermo Fisher to pay $4.1B for Solventum’s purification and filtration business
Thermo Fisher Scientific announced Tuesday that it is paying $4.1 billion in cash to buy Solventum’s purification and filtration business, whose technologies are used in the production of biologics as well as medical technologies and industrial applications.
The purification and filtration business, which generated approximately $1 billion of revenue in 2024 for Solventum, is “highly complementary” to Thermo Fisher’s bioproduction business and “strengthens” its offering in the high-growth bioprocessing market, according to the announcement.
“The addition of Solventum’s business is an outstanding strategic fit with our company and will create significant value for our customers and shareholders,” Thermo Fisher CEO Marc Casper said in a statement. “Solventum’s Purification & 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 in a Tuesday note to investors wrote that while just 25% or about $250 million of Solventum’s business is in bioprocessing, the acquisition helps bolster Thermo Fisher’s existing bioprocessing franchise “which has primarily focused on cell culture media and single-use plastics.” Souda said the deal is “likely to help the company more strongly enter the filtration category in both downstream and upstream processes,” where Danaher and Repligen “are more strongly positioned.”
Solventum’s business, with sites worldwide and approximately 2,500 employees, will become part of Thermo Fisher’s Life Sciences Solutions segment. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
During last month’s fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call, Casper told analysts he was “excited” that “from an M&A perspective” under the Trump administration, “we’re likely to see a much more reasonable environment from a regulatory perspective.”
Casper added that it’s “our job” to “work collaboratively with the administration, and we have a good working relationship certainly with the president’s first administration.”
Layoffs, pharma services expansion
Earlier this month, Thermo Fisher announced it is laying off 300 employees at two viral vector manufacturing facilities in Massachusetts, which will take effect March 30, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice.
The layoffs will affect workers at Thermo Fisher’s Cambridge and Plainville sites. In November 2024, Thermo Fisher cut 160 jobs at those two viral vector plants as well as in Lexington, Massachusetts, which the Boston Business Journal at that time reported would be closing. Early last year, the company also axed 74 jobs at its plasmids manufacturing lab in Carlsbad, California.
Despite the latest layoffs in Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher says it is expanding its pharma services capabilities including sites in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Bend, Oregon, to enable research and development (R&D), manufacturing and testing of oral solid dose drug formulations.
Thermo Fisher also recently invested in boosting its global clinical trial network, including a new GMP-certified ultra-cold facility in Bleiswijk, Netherlands, label printing and seamless packaging integration in Basel, Switzerland, as well as expanded clinical trial logistics solutions in Buenos Aires, Argentina.