Pall Corp. is in the late stages of an auction that could value
the maker of water-filtration and purification systems at well over
$10 billion.
Potential buyers Danaher Corp. and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
are vying for Pall, with final bids due this week, people familiar
with the matter said.
The exact price the company could fetch couldn't be learned, and
the talks may not lead to a deal.
Pall, based in Port Washington, N.Y., had a market value as of
Monday's close of $10.6 billion, and given prices typically paid in
takeovers, a deal could value the company at roughly $13 billion or
more.
Pall stock already had risen 19% over the past year on a series
of strong earnings reports, and hit an all-time high of $105.02
earlier this year, according to FactSet. The shares closed Monday
at $99.31, down slightly, but rose 19% after hours following a Wall
Street Journal report on the talks.
Pall sells its purification and filtration products to a wide
range of customers including biopharmaceutical companies, airplane
manufacturers, brewers and municipal water suppliers. It had
revenue of $2.8 billion last year, up 5% from 2013, according to
securities filings.
Pall traces its roots to 1946, when Dr. David Pall founded Micro
Metallic Corp. in his garage, according to a company history. It
changed its name in 1957 and soon became a supplier of hydraulic
filters to Boeing Co. planes.
Today, its revenue is roughly split between an industrial
division, whose revenue has been declining, and a faster-growing
life-sciences division, which makes laboratory products such as
syringe filters and petri dishes.
Pall would be Danaher's largest takeover to date, surpassing the
$5.9 billion it paid in 2011 for Beckman Coulter Inc., according to
S&P Capital IQ. Danaher has a market capitalization of $59
billion, and had $2.5 billion in cash and equivalents as of April
3, according to a securities filing.
Danaher has been outbid in big takeover auctions of late, such
as those of Ashland Inc.'s water-technology unit and Johnson &
Johnson's diagnostics business. It teamed up on those bids with
private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP, which isn't involved in
its effort to acquire Pall, according to a person familiar with the
matter.
Thermo Fisher, which has a market value of $52 billion, has
stuck with smaller acquisitions since buying lab-equipment maker
Life Technologies Inc. last year for $13.6 billion.
About 39% of Thermo Fisher's 2014 revenue came from lab products
and services, a segment that includes filtration systems to keep
solutions sterile.
Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com, Dana Cimilluca at
dana.cimilluca@wsj.com and Dana Mattioli at
dana.mattioli@wsj.com
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