GE Healthcare Completes Xcellerex Deal

GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company ( ( GE - Analyst Report ) completed its acquisition of Xcellerex, Inc., a supplier of innovative manufacturing technologies for the fast-growing biopharmaceutical industry.

Through this acquisition, GE will expand its Healthcare offering of products and services for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals such as recombinant proteins, antibodies and vaccines. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Xcellerex is a leading developer and producer of turn-key bio-manufacturing systems and production-scale bioreactors based around single-use components. These products provide major advantages such as faster installation, lower capital investment, reduced risk of cross-contamination and huge flexibility, unlike traditional manufacturing technologies.

Xcellerex has a modular technology that can be well integrated with GE Healthcare's cell culture products. Also being of a modular nature they will go down well with customers because of easier installation. This in turn will speed up deployment, thus showing up quickly on GE Healthcare's top line.

For fiscal 2011, GE’s Healthcare segment reported revenue growth of 7% and operating profit growth of 2% year over. Revenue growth for the year was primarily driven by increased volume from higher equipment sales and services and the effects of the weaker U.S. dollar. Geographically, the revenue growth was strongest in the emerging markets, followed by the U.S. and other international markets.

GE Healthcare (comprising 12.3% of GE's total revenue in fiscal 2011) is one of the world’s leading providers of essential healthcare technologies to developed, developing and emerging countries. Its Medical diagnostics and life sciences segment develops and manufactures diagnostic imaging agents used in medical scanning procedures, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing and purification and tools for protein and cellular analysis for pharmaceutical and academic research.

GE’s primary competitors in the Healthcare segment are Phillips ( PHG - Analyst Report ) and Siemens AG ( SI - Analyst Report ) . GE currently has a Zacks Rank #3 which implies a short term Hold rating on the stock.