Johnson Matthey today said it completed the sale of its Medical Device Components (MDC) business.
Private equity firm Montagu paid $700 million cash for the business on “a cash-free debt-free basis,” Johnson Matthey said.
“The board confirms its intention to return £250 million of the net proceeds from the sale of MDC by way of an on-market share buyback programme,” Johnson Matthey told investors. “This will commence later this week and further details will be announced in due course.”
San Diego-based MDC develops and manufactures miniature components for minimally invasive medical devices used in high-growth clinical specialties. It focuses on complex and high-precision components made from platinum group metals and nitinol.
The business has decades of expertise in the metallurgy, micro-machining and coating of these specialty alloys. It has manufacturing sites in San Diego; Mexicali, Mexico; and Tullamarine, Australia.
Medical nitinol manufacturing: How this nickel-titanium alloy is made for medical devices
In a LinkedIn post sharing Medical Design & Outsourcing‘s reporting of the transaction’s completion, MDC said it has launched a new website: medicaldevicecomponents.com.
“A huge thank you to Johnson Matthey for their incredible support in helping us reach this milestone,” MDC said in the post. “As we embark on this new journey, we look forward to a future filled with growth of our platinum and nitinol products under Montagu’s stewardship. … More to come!”
MDC will now operate as a standalone company under the leadership of its previous management. That includes CEO Don Freeman, who said when the deal was announced in March that the business planned to grow organically and through M&A.
“MDC has rare and hard to replicate capabilities that enable it to handle the most complex and demanding precision-engineered components at scale,” Montagu Partner Adrien Sassi said at the time. “With support from Johnson Matthey, Don and his team have positioned the business to capitalize on the fast growth of its underlying markets and blue-chip OEM customers. We look forward to supporting their ambitious expansion plans.”
It’s the latest deal in the nitinol market as medical device developers find new applications for the nickel-titanium alloy, ranging from orthopedics to brain and heart implants and interventional devices.
Earlier this year, Confluent Medical Technologies invested at least $50 million in ATI’s nitinol melt and materials conversion infrastructure. Last year, Resonetics bought the SAES Getters medical nitinol business for $900 million.
— Associate Editor Sean Whooley contributed to this report.
