Continuing a yearlong run of corporate deals, Medtronic on Wednesday announced a $110 million all-cash deal to acquire a Scottish company called Aircraft Medical that makes video laryngoscopes.
The devices are used by anesthesiologists to place breathing tubes in patients, particularly those considered to have difficult airways. Unlike traditional scopes, the video feature lets the clinician see a person's vocal cords before inserting the tube into the windpipe.
Medtronic's website says another company it acquired this year — Covidien PLC — was already the exclusive acute-care U.S. distributor of the device, known as the McGrath MAC enhanced direct laryngoscope.
Medtronic is based in Ireland, but has U.S. headquarters and top executive offices in Fridley. The deal to acquire Aircraft Medical extends Medtronic's product offerings to address "respiratory compromise," which the company said is quickly becoming the third-most costly hospital inpatient expense in the U.S.
A Virginia-based organization called the Respiratory Compromise Institute, which was formed earlier this year to study the condition, says on its website that the condition "is a state in which there is a high likelihood of decompensation into respiratory insufficiency, respiratory failure or death, but in which specific interventions (enhanced monitoring and/or therapies) might prevent or mitigate decompensation."
The acquisition of Aircraft Medical is expected to have a neutral impact on 2016 earnings for Medtronic. The deal may become accretive to earnings in later years.
It was Medtronic's 10th publicly announced acquisition of the year.
In January, Medtronic acquired Covidien in a $49.9 billion stock-and-cash deal that transformed the company into the world's largest pure medical device-maker. That Covidien deal proved controversial because it shifted Medtronic's legal headquarters offshore to low-tax Ireland, but company executives promised to keep creating jobs and investing in promising companies.
