BD Drops $4.2B for Edwards’ Critical Care Unit

Edwards Lifescience’s Critical Care Business has found a new home. Becton Dickinson & Company said that it would acquire the business for $4.2 billion. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

The Irvine, CA-based company said it would spin the business off late last year. The reasoning was because it would give Edwards the opportunity to focus more on its structural heart offerings, which include transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedures.

BD said Critical Care is a high-growth, specialist in advanced patient monitoring with advanced AI algorithms. The companies claimed that Critical Care invented the hemodynamic monitoring category, and its solutions are currently used in more than 10,000 hospitals globally to better understand the cardiovascular condition in real-time for critically ill patients, which helps improve outcomes.

Critical Care has about 4,500 employees with most based in Irvine, California. In 2023, the business generated more than $900 million in revenue.

"Critical Care expands BD's portfolio of smart connected care solutions with its growing set of leading monitoring technologies, advanced AI-enabled clinical decision tools and robust innovation pipeline that complement BD's existing technologies serving operating rooms and intensive care units," said Tom Polen, chairman, CEO and president of BD. "We believe the combination unlocks multiple new avenues for growth and value creation through BD's broad global footprint, increased penetration across new and existing hospital customers, new innovation opportunities across data sets and platforms, and application of the BD Excellence operating system. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to all key financial measures with a strong return profile, which underscores our continued commitment to generate sustained shareholder value. Critical Care is well aligned to BD's core innovation and business strategies, is a strong cultural fit and we look forward to welcoming Katie and Critical Care's talented team to BD."