In its latest move of adding or subtracting business lines, PerkinElmer Inc. reports it has agreed to sell its Illumination and Detection Solutions (IDS) business to Veritas Capital Fund III LP, a New York-based private equity firm, for approximately $500 million in cash.

According to officials at Waltham-based PerkinElmer (NYSE: PKI), the IDS division includes approximately 3,000 employees and 14 manufacturing facilities worldwide. It develops and markets custom-designed specialty lighting and sensor components, subsystems and integrated solutions to customers in the health, environmental and security markets. IDS is expected to generate revenue of approximately $300 million in 2010.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2010 and is subject to customary closing conditions. Robert Friel, chairman and CEO of PerkinElmer, said in a release that selling IDS frees up capital which the company would use to invest in its “more attractive Human Health and Environmental Health end markets.”

Also today, PerkinElmer said that its board of directors has authorized an increase in the number of shares of the company’s common stock available for repurchase to 13 million.

Earlier this month, PerkinElmer bought VisEn Medical Inc., a Bedford molecular imaging technology company, for an undisclosed amount. VisEn Medical, founded in 2000, develops its Fluorescence Agent Portfolio and its Fluorescence Molecular Tomographic Imaging Systems, which can help identify biomarkers and therapeutic efficacy in cells.

So far this year PerkinElmer has made a number of acquisitions, including its April buyout of Spokane, Wash.-based diagnostic genetic testing firm Signature Genomic Laboratories LLC and its February buy of Washington D.C.-based partner Danaher Corp.’s share of a joint venture in the mass spectrometry business, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry.

 

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