Oft-discussed spinout GE Healthcare recently dinged its way into public trading with its Nasdaq debut from its Wisconsin-based manufacturing facility. Its stock, listed as “GEHC,” rose 8% above its $54.30 starting share price on its first market day. Continued success is expected, as the current company is made up of GE segments that raked in a combined $18 billion while under the larger GE umbrella. This makes it a natural frontrunner for aggressive investment opportunities.
“It’s really about bringing the best of our GE heritage, while becoming an independent and more focused, more agile company,” said Catherine Estrampes, the President and Chief Executive Officer of GE HealthCare’s U.S. and Canada division. The company’s more progressive culture, she went on to say, “will result in faster decision-making, greater integration into the healthcare ecosystem, and a greater ability to take calculated risks that may not have been possible as part of a large industrial conglomerate.” Overall, the spinout is a “catalyst moment for us.”
New R&D funding is set to be divided strategically among the spinout’s four core segments: patient care solutions, ultrasound, imaging, and pharmaceutical diagnostics. Long-term goals include scoping out larger-scale M&A that will incorporate adjacent or altogether new market segments, as Estrampes said, in “image-guided solutions, workflow efficiencies, and therapeutics.” Despite all the potential business to be done, however, she still signaled the company’s approach would be “disciplined.”
