Only a few months after Bioventus CEO Ken Reali described to Fierce Medtech the company’s plans to focus on growing its business in order to recover from pandemic-induced setbacks into a “new normal,” the orthopedic therapy developer is making good on those plans.
Fresh off its $125 million initial public offering and a $110 million buyout of device maker Bioness, Bioventus has sealed a deal with Misonix to bring its surgical devices and wound care technologies under Bioventus’ already expansive umbrella.
Under the terms of the merger, Misonix—a New York-based public company that has been producing ultrasonic devices for decades—will combine with Bioventus, and the resulting company will operate under the latter’s name.
Bioventus will acquire Misonix with a combination of stock and cash that values the surgical device maker at $518 million. Misonix stockholders will be given the option of cashing in their holdings for either about 1.68 shares of Bioventus stock per Misonix share or for $28 in cash per share.
The cash option represents a 25% premium on Misonix’s average stock price for the week leading up to the merger announcement. Those funds will come from Bioventus’ store of cash on hand and additional financing from Wells Fargo.
Once both companies’ shareholders and regulatory bodies give the go-ahead, the transaction is expected to close before the end of this year. At that time, Misonix’s CEO Stavros Vizirgianakis and a member of its board of directors, Patrick Beyer, will join the combined company’s board of directors.
The addition of Misonix’s technologies is expected to bring a massive boost to Bioventus’ business, with Reali predicting in a statement that the merger will not only usher in “double-digit revenue growth,” but also open up “significant opportunity for long-term margin expansion.”
That initial growth is projected to translate to an influx of nearly $80 million in revenue for calendar year 2021. At the same time, the merger will also save the combined companies about $20 million in overlapping costs including public company expenses and general support, systems and infrastructure costs.
That’ll build on Bioventus’ already sizable growth for the year: Shortly before announcing the proposed merger, Bioventus released a preliminary sales report for the second quarter, registering net sales between $108 million and $110 million—a leap of up to nearly 90% compared to the same period in 2020.
In a Q&A session with investors about the transaction, Bioventus noted that Misonix’s products will slot neatly into Bioventus’ existing call points, rather than forcing the company to establish entirely new departments.
Misonix’s wound care portfolio, for example, will integrate with Bioventus’ foot and ankle offerings. Misonix manufactures a variety of wound coverings to help regenerate damaged skin and heal chronic wounds, including human skin allografts TheraSkin and Therion.
Its surgical devices, meanwhile, will find a new home next to Bioventus’ wide range of orthopedic tools. Misonix’s offerings in the space center on its Nexus ultrasonic system, which combines the BoneScalpel, SonicOne and SonaStar tools in one platform for precision bone cutting, wound cleaning and tissue removal, respectively.