With the sell-off of its applied science, food and enterprise services businesses now complete, PerkinElmer is charting a new path with its remaining diagnostics and life sciences divisions.
The first step on that path? Shedding the PerkinElmer name. Though the nearly century-old moniker will live on in the newly sold-off businesses—which were picked up by private equity firm New Mountain Capital last August in a deal worth up to $2.45 billion—as of Tuesday, their medtech-focused sibling will continue on as Revvity.
The new name is meant to evoke the company’s goal of revolutionizing healthcare—at a revved-up pace—to potentially save lives, or “vitae” in Latin.
“It really is a brand that symbolizes action, momentum, and it’s not a change in symbol, as we say, but really a symbol of change for the company,” Yves Dubaquie, Ph.D., senior vice president of Revvity’s diagnostics division, said in an interview with Fierce Medtech. “It’s bold, dynamic, energetic and youthful, and it’s going to appeal to the type of young researcher and innovator that is out there that has other opportunities to join other companies.”
Alan Fletcher, Ph.D., Dubaquie’s counterpart in the life sciences division, echoed his excitement: “Having the opportunity to create something from scratch—very few opportunities for that occur at this point,” he said.
“If you think about the way in which healthcare is changing, we wanted to create a brand and an identity that will really become visionary in that area,” Fletcher continued, describing Revvity’s key purpose as “expanding the boundaries of human potential through science.” He also highlighted the “very vibrant” yellow of the company’s new logo as a reflection of its belief that “we have a really invigorated organization that can actually make a difference in healthcare today.”
Both Fletcher and Dubaquie report to Revvity CEO Prahlad Singh, Ph.D., who joined PerkinElmer in 2014 as an executive in the diagnostics division before being named president and chief executive of the company in early 2020.
Along with the new name and logo, Revvity will also undergo a stock market makeover, with its new ticker symbol, “RVTY,” slated to replace the former “PKI” on May 16.
Meanwhile, Revvity will rebrand a handful of its technologies that previously carried the PerkinElmer name. For example, the PerkinElmer Informatics software platform will become Revvity Signals Software, while the PerkinElmer Genomics testing service will become Revvity Omics.
Being able to zero in on the company’s other life sciences and diagnostics offerings has created a “more streamlined and more focused company,” Dubaquie said, and one that’s now “internally organized to move faster,” per Fletcher.
“If you think about the types of translational technology platforms that we have, those platforms really facilitate the decision-making for our research and clinical customers, and by putting them together and working from this corner, we have the full continuum from research to development, and then from diagnosis to cure,” Dubaquie said.
That positions Revvity “at the most upstream part of the R&D process,” he continued. “Basically, by knowing what’s coming, we will have the agility to be playing where science is going tomorrow, if you will, and to plan for that.”
Revvity represents the bulk of the conglomerate formerly known as PerkinElmer. The New Mountain-purchased divisions, which comprise food safety, environmental testing and industrial quality assurance offerings, brought in just under $1.3 billion in revenues in 2022 and accounted for only about a third of the company’s 17,000-strong workforce.
Meanwhile, the diagnostics and life sciences divisions now known as Revvity together raked in more than $3.3 billion for the year and count 11,000 employees. The company offers software, instruments and reagents for genetic testing, newborn and prenatal screening and other patient diagnostics as well as basic and translational research services and clinical R&D support for its customers, which include clinical labs, drugmakers, academic researchers and more.
In its original announcement about the split, PerkinElmer said it was expecting to see the standalone medtech company’s organic revenues grow by about 10% per year after the separation was complete. Fletcher said that will come from Revvity’s plans to “double down and reinvest” in high-growth areas.
“When you go from four divisions to two—life science and diagnostics have always had markets that are driving growth at a particularly strong level across the organization, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve chosen to focus down and really put that in place,” he said. “It allows us to get more products to the market in a much faster way and partner with our customers to drive through the understanding and push the scientific boundaries as we move forward.”