
Smith & Nephew (NYSE:SNN) is looking to increase business in Brazil 7-fold, as part of its new emerging markets strategy.
CEO Olivier Bohuon told investors this week that business at the British orthopedic giant is growing at a 20% clip in China and India, but the firm is eyeing Brazil as the next growth driver for the company.
"BRIC are growing more than 20%, and this is mainly given by 2 countries: by China and India. We are very active with the dynamic we have in these 2 countries," Bohuon said. "Brazil, as I was mentioning, is starting, okay? So we expect also to see in the years to come a strong development in Brazil…The potential of Brazil according to us is certainly over $150 million of potential revenue."
SNN does about $20 million in sales in the country but is looking to increase that dramatically by investing locally. The company has hired a General Manager for Brazil and will look to build out its presence even more in the coming months.
"Manufacturing is a big plus when you can do it locally. So we work on that, and now that we have the GM, the strategy will start to happen," he said.
As reported last year by MassDevice.com, SNN is putting a lot of skin into the BRIC markets, last year it launched an ambitious plan to realign the entire company to focus growth and invest $300 million in R&D with the intention of growing the company’s sales in BRIC countries from $120 million to $500 million within the next 5 years.
Masimo eyeing a pair of acquisitions
Irvine, Calif.-based Masimo (NSDQ:MASI) is holding onto some of its cash for a couple moves, CEO Joe Kiani told investors this week.
"We have a couple of acquisitions that we are looking at," Kiani said. "If we can come to terms with either or both, we’re going to need our cash for those acquisitions. And there’s other things we were thinking of doing. So right now, we think there’s better things to do with cash. If that changes and stock price does not move much, obviously we’d probably jump in and buy more shares." Read a transcript of his call with investors
STJ takes $70 million restructuring charge during Q1 for cutting Swedish operations
From it’s quarterly earnings release, comes this nugget from St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) about its recent cutbacks in Sweden.
"During the first 3 months of 2012, the company incurred charges totaling $70 million, of which $42 million primarily related to restructuring actions to realign certain activities in the company’s CRM business and sales and selling support organizations. The formalized plan for these actions was announced in the 2nd quarter of 2011 and included phasing out CRM manufacturing and research and development operations in Sweden, reducing the company’s workforce and rationalizing product lines. The charges incurred to date include employee termination costs and asset write-off and impairment charges associated with inventory, fixed assets and intangible assets." Read more of St. Jude’s earnings report.
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