This story originally ran on July 22.
Danaher officials this week said the firm expects its AB Sciex division to see mid-single-digit revenue growth in 2010 based in part on sales of the company's new TripleTOF 5600 mass spectrometer.
AB Sciex introduced the instrument at the American Society for Mass Spectrometry conference in May and will begin shipments later this year (PM 5/28/2010).
In an conference call to discuss Danaher's H1 earnings, CEO Lawrence Culp said that the TripleTOF 5600 rollout is "an important launch for us."
He added that customer evaluations are currently underway, "and the feedback continues to be net positive."
Danaher's medical technologies business, which includes AB Sciex, recorded sales of $1.9 billion for H1 2010 – up 24 percent from $1.45 billion in H1 2009. The business posted an operating profit of $152 million, up 2 percent from $149 million in the year-ago period.
Culp cited costs related to the January acquisition of the AB Sciex joint venture from Life Technologies' Applied Biosystems unit and MDS.for a 240 basis point year-over-year decline in operating profit margins in the medical technologies division.
"[The integration of AB Sciex] is a fairly complicated decoupling from two parents. You've got IT systems that are being transitioned; you've got other one-time expenses like leases that are being broken to stitch this business together," he said.
In its earnings report the company noted that it "expects acquisition-related charges, primarily related to the AB Sciex and Molecular Devices acquisitions, to adversely impact the [medical technology] segment's operating profit margins through the balance of 2010, but at lower levels than experienced in the first half of 2010."