Fujifilm Holdings Corp will buy two units of Merck & Co that make biopharmaceuticals, as it targets growth in the healthcare industry to make up for declining sales in cameras and film.
The Tokyo-based maker of imaging equipment and digital cameras will acquire laboratories in the US and UK for ¥40 billion (US$489 million), Nikkei English News reported yesterday without saying where it got the pricing information. Toshihiro Matsumoto, a Fujifilm spokesman, confirmed the purchase, without giving a price.
Fujifilm plans to triple sales in healthcare in the next decade as the market for supplying biologic vaccines and drugs is expected to increase by 15 percent a year, it said. The deal comes as sales from its imaging solutions, which includes color films and digital cameras, fell 16 percent last fiscal year as more consumers use smartphones for taking photos.
The company will buy BioManufacturing Network Diosynth RTP LLC of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and MSD Biologics (UK) Ltd, based in Billingham, England. The deal for the units, which generate about ¥13 billion in sales a year, should be completed by early next month, Matsumoto said.
The units of Merck, the second-largest drugmaker in the US, include manufacturing facilities for biologic products used in vaccines and drugs based on human proteins.
This is the fifth acquisition announced by Fujifilm announced in the past year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The list includes the US$47.2 million purchase of Japan Tissue Engineering Co in August last year.
Fujifilm, which makes equipment for medical scans, had a loss of ¥38.4 billion in the year ended March 31 on structural reforms to cut costs, the company said in April last year. Sales dropped 10 percent to ¥2.18 trillion in the period on weaker demand and as the stronger yen pared the value of overseas revenue, it said.
Sales from imaging solutions fell 16 percent to ¥345.5 billion in the year ended March 31. Fujifilm generated ¥263.9 billion from medical systems and life sciences in the period, a 2 percent decrease from a year earlier.
Fujifilm aims to more than triple sales from its healthcare unit to ¥1 trillion by 2019. The company bought drugmaker Toyama Chemical in February 2008 and established a generic-drug joint venture with Mitsubishi Corp last year.
“This will be one of the core businesses along with digital cameras and liquid-crystal material,” said Kazuyoshi Saito, an equities analyst at Cosmo Securities Co in Tokyo. “This will be positive for its earnings in the long run.”
Fujifilm rose 0.1 percent to ¥2,860 as of the 3pm close in Tokyo trading. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose 0.9. Merck advanced 0.5 percent to US$32.19 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading on Friday last week before the announcement was made.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”