Johnson & Johnson completes an acquisition and a divestiture this week

Johnson & Johnson has been busy. The company announced yesterday that Ethicon, Inc. has completed its acquisition of Auris Health, Inc. for approximately $3.4 billion in cash and is now the provider of Auris Health’s robotic platform technology, currently used in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in the lung.

J&J said in its release that the Auris technology complements robotic platform technologies currently in development in general surgery and “aspires to bring disruptive innovation to the full continuum of procedures, including open, laparoscopic, robotic and endoluminal.”

In other company news, J&J also completed its divestiture of its Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) business, a division of Ethicon, Inc., to Fortive Corporation.

The aggregate value is approximately $2.8 billion, consisting of $2.7 billion of cash proceeds from Fortive Corporation and $1 billion of retained net receivables. According to the release, ASP solutions include capital, consumables and software for use in low-temperature terminal sterilization and high-level disinfection of reusable surgical instruments.