Perkinelmer to Divest Fluid Sciences

Scientific instrument maker PerkinElmer plans to divest its Fluid Sciences business segment to focus on growth opportunities in health sciences and photonic markets. As a first step in implementing that plan, the firm has inked a definitive agreement to sell the aerospace segment of Fluid Sciences to Eaton Corp. for $333 million.

Fluid Sciences had sales of $244 million in 2004 from three businesses: sealing and pneumatic systems for commercial, military, and business aircraft; sealing and linear motion devices used on semiconductor wafer processing equipment; and fluid testing services.

The instrumentation firm is discussing the sale of the latter two businesses with undisclosed buyers and plans to complete the sale of the entire Fluid Sciences segment by the end of this year. It expects proceeds from the sale of all three Fluid Sciences segments of $400 million.

Gregory L. Summe, PerkinElmer’s CEO, says the proceeds “will help us build our growth platforms, with particular emphasis on genetic screening, medical imaging, molecular medicine, and services.” He adds that “the divestitures should reduce our exposure to more cyclical markets and position PerkinElmer to deliver higher revenue.”

The Fluid Sciences business segment consists of businesses once part of EG&G, which bought the analytical instrumentation businesses of the former Perkin-Elmer Corp. in 1999. EG&G adopted the PerkinElmer name, and CEO Summe has since focused the firm on what he says are the more promising growth opportunities in life sciences instrumentation. PerkinElmer had total sales of $1.7 billion in 2004.