Philips buys BioTelemetry for $2.8 billion in cardio push

Royal Philips NV agreed to buy U.S.-based BioTelemetry Inc. for $2.8 billion to expand in wearable heart monitors as the Dutch company expands in the burgeoning at-home care market.

With the global coronavirus pandemic still raging, demand for Philips’s equipment that allows doctors and nurses to provide real-time remote care over the cloud is surging. The Amsterdam-based company expects the BioTelemetry purchase to add to sales growth and expand its profit margin in 2021.

“There’s an acceleration of telehealth and we think that’s structural,” Chief Executive Officer Frans van Houten said on a call. “That’s a fundamental push for cloud-based solutions.”

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Philips shares rose 2.4% to 45.07 euros as of 9:54 a.m. in Amsterdam.

Van Houten sees room for additional deals as he races to build out Philips’s telehealth and diagnostics portfolio to provide a one-stop shop for hospitals and clinics looking for ways to optimize costs. Having agreed to acquire the market leader in cardio wearables, Philips could go on to make other purchases as soon as next year, he said.

The bulk of BioTelemetry’s sales come from equipment to diagnose and monitor heart disorders, with AI-based data analytics used to pick up abnormalities. It’s a market worth more than $3 billion and growing, according to Philips.

By Andrew Marc Noel