Stericycle hopes for an Irish pot of gold
services in the US, has stretched its reach across the Atlantic,
completing the acquisition of Ireland's Sterile Technologies Group.
Stericycle bought the Dublin-based company for $131m, paying $114m in cash and agreeing to take on $17m (€14m) in debt.
Sterile Technologies provides medical waste services to a customer base throughout Ireland and the UK and achieved revenues of $55m in 2005.
Stericycle expects the acquisition will add $46m to its 2006 revenues, a welcome prospect for the company who earned $71,000 in the fourth quarter of 2005, a huge dip on the $19.06m in the previous year.
The waste services firm saw its fourth quarter profit wiped out by a $36.5m preliminary settlement paid to resolve a pending class action lawsuit by the minority shareholders of Stericycle's publicly traded majority-owned subsidiary, 3CI (Complete Compliance Corporation).
The settlement will now allow 3CI to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stericycle.
"We agreed to settle this lawsuit to put the matter behind us and focus on realising the synergies that can be obtained by integrating 3CI's operations into our own," said Mark Miller, Stericycle's president and CEO.
"Considering the benefits that we expect to gain by being able to integrate 3CI, we concluded that it was in Stericycle's best interest to put an end to the continuing cost and distraction of litigation and to eliminate the uncertainty of a jury trial," he said.
