Chemtreat Company

Danaher is a well-diversified industrial and medical conglomerate whose products test, analyze, and diagnose. Its subsidiaries design, manufacture, and market products and offer services geared at worldwide professional, medical, industrial, and commercial markets. Danaher operates through five segments: Life Sciences & Diagnostics (research and clinical tools); Test & Measurement (electronic measurement instruments); Industrial Technologies (product identification, motion control equipment, and sensors); Environmental (turbine pumps and air/water analysis and treatment equipment); and Dental (orthodontic bracket systems and lab products).  Geographic Reach Danaher serves customers in more than 125 countries, but it generates almost half of its revenues from North America, primarily the US. Operations Built largely through acquisitions, Danaher's five business segments reflect a well balanced portfolio. Top segments Life Sciences and Test & Measurement accounted for 29% and 21% of revenues in fiscal 2011, respectively. Life Sciences products include imaging systems, acute care equipment (blood gas measurement devices), pathology diagnostics (tissue embedding and chemical reagents), and instrumentation (microscopes). Key Danaher subsidiaries include Beckman Coulter, Matco Tools Corporation, Jacobs Vehicle Systems, Tektonix, X-Rite, EskoArtwork, Linx Printing Technologies, Fluke Corporation, Keithley Instruments, Sybron Dental Specialties, Trojan Technologies, Gems Sensors, Gilbarco, and Sea-Bird Electronics. Financial Analysis Danaher's balance sheet has enjoyed positive headway over the years. From 2010 to 2011, its revenues increased by 22%, from $13.2 billion to about $16.1 billion. Its net income jumped from $1.8 billion to almost $2.2 billion -- an increase of 21%. Strategy Already its top segment, Danaher is working to get an even larger footold in the life sciences sector, whose growth is being driven by such factors as aging populations, increased preventive health care, and US health care reforms. It is also seeking opportunities to beef up its industrial business. To this end, Danaher uses a combination of divestitures and acquisitions. Danaher in late 2012 agreed to sell Apex Tool Group to Bain Capital for about $1.6 billion. In 2011 it made another major divestiture, selling off of its UK-based Pacific Scientific Aerospace to Meggitt for $680 million. Mergers and Acquisitions In mid-2011 Danaher made its largest acquisition to date, purchasing California-based Beckman Coulter for approximately $5.8 billion. The landmark deal significantly widened and expanded the diversity of the company's clinical diagnostics and life sciences research product portfolio. Further pushing into the medical diganostics market, Danaher followed the Beckman Coulter acquisition up with the 2012 purchase of IRIS International, a provider of automated in-vitro diagnostics systems, for $338 million. Danaher estimates it could spend $5 billion on mergers and acquisitions in 2013 and 2014. On the industrial side, Danaher made a move to to build on its product identification portfolio by acquiring X-Rite, a provider of color-science products that include spectrophotometers and colorimeters, for about $625 million in mid-2012. The X-Rite deal follows the 2011 acquisition of Belgium's EskoArtwork for about $470 million. EskoArtwork added a suite of software and hardware tools for digital product packaging design, commercial printing, and publishing.