Danaher Corp. / DHR

About Danaher Corp.

2099 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 12th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20006
www.danaher.com | 202-828-0850 | Founded: 1984

Industry: Manufacturing | Category: Public Companies

Danaher has pursued its growth strategy by acquiring smaller businesses. It bought 16 last year and budgeted billions more for acquisitions in the next three years. Among its purchases in the past year were Visual Networks Inc. of Rockville, which makes hardware for managing communications networks, for about $75 million; and Leica Microsystems, a German manufacturer of high-powered microscopes, for about $550 million. The purchase of Pelton & Crane, a North Carolina provider of dental equipment, for about $85 million cash made Danaher the biggest maker of dental equipment in the world, it says.
In April of this year, Danaher agreed to pay $2 billion for another maker of dental equipment, Sybron Dental Specialties Inc. Danaher executives said they planned to spend $5 billion on acquisitions this year.
The firm also made money when it bid but didn't buy. After it made a $791 million bid last September for Leica Geosytems AG, a Swiss maker of surveying instruments, it refused to raise its bid in response to a higher offer. Then it sold all of its 95,000 shares of the firm. In January of this year, the company refused to boost a $634 million bid for First Technology PLC, a British firm that manufactures electronic testing equipment and crash-test dummies. After Honeywell International raised its rival bid to $718 million, Danaher had 15 million shares of First Tech that it could sell, worth close to $1 a share more than before.
The company is focusing on products that sell consistently despite economic swings. The results so far have been record profit, sales and cash flow. Now that Kmart Holding Corp. has bought Sears, what will happen to the hand-tools business? That's "a bit of a wild card," said President H. Lawrence Culp Jr.
According to the annual Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans, Danaher founders Steven and Mitchell Rales are the District's richest men, with net worths of $2 billion and $2.1 billion, respectively. The two own 22 percent of the company.

Chairman: Steven M. Rales

President and CEO: H. Lawrence Culp Jr.

2005 Financial Data

Revenues: $7,984,704,000 | Net Income: $897,800,000
Asssets: $9,163,109,000 | Earnings Per Share: $2.76
Stockholder Equity: $5,080,350,000 | Annual Dividend: $0.07
Total employees: 40,000 | Local employees: 44