Royal Philips eyeing billion-dollar deals after lighting spinoff

Royal Philips, the Dutch maker of healthcare equipment, is looking at billion-dollar-plus acquisitions in the coming months following a spinoff of its lighting business.

Healthcare informatics, combining technology and data to manage patient health, is a target market, chief executive Frans van Houten said in an interview.

A typical purchase might be similar to the company’s $1.2 billion takeover in 2014 of smart catheter-maker Volcano, he said. Philips may also pursue smaller deals.

Healthcare is Philips's largest business and accounted for 45 per cent of revenue last year. Technology in the industry is changing rapidly and traditional rivals like Medtronic and new entrants such as Google parent Alphabet and Apple are stepping up the pressure.

Philips’s wide-ranging product history – everything from light bulbs and coffee makers to MRI machines – could help it grab more of the connected market for homes and hospitals.

The goal is to integrate hardware, software and services for healthcare systems, an arena that includes tech giant IBM.

“It has not escaped us that other competitors have also identified health as an attractive marketplace,” Mr Van Houten said.

– Bloomberg