Thomson Reuters Announces Plans to Divest Its Healthcare Business Including Micromedex

One product that many medical librarians and consumers use from Thomson Reuters Healthcare is Micromedex.

Drugs.com and MayoClinic.com are consumer health sites that use Micromedex content.

From a Thomson Reuters Announcement:

Thomson Reuters today [Monday, June 6, 2011] announced its intention to divest its Healthcare business, which has been part of the company’s Healthcare & Science segment. The Healthcare business provides data, analytics and performance benchmarking solutions and services to companies, government agencies and healthcare professionals.

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“Thomson Reuters has strong positions in our chosen markets and we believe we will achieve better all-in returns for our shareholders by divesting the Healthcare business and re-deploying the proceeds in our core franchises. We have leading positions in global markets, including legal, tax and accounting, science and intellectual property, financial services and media, where we see significant opportunities for future growth and profitability. While a growing and profitable unit, our Healthcare business lacks the integration with and global scale of our other units, and our disciplined approach to capital allocation convinced us that the expected proceeds from a sale into a consolidating market could be better applied elsewhere in our portfolio,” said Mr. Glocer, [CEO of Thomson Reuters].

The Healthcare business in 2010 had revenues of approximately $450 million and an operating margin comparable to the company’s consolidated margin of 19.3%. Following adjustment for this divestiture by removing Healthcare’s results from ongoing businesses, no material impact is expected to the company’s previously announced 2011 outlook. The company expects the divestiture to close before the end of the year.

This divestiture will result in a realignment of the company’s existing Intellectual Property and Science businesses into a single operating unit of the Professional division. Both are global and support scientific research, discovery and innovation.

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Also Available: Thomson Reuters Healthcare Divestiture Q & A (5 pages; PDF)

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