Eitan Medical sells wearable drug pump business

Medical equipment group Eitan Medicalwhich is controlled by husband and wife team Boaz and Tali Eitan, recently completed the sale of its Sorrel wearable drug delivery device business to LTS (Lohmann Therapie-Systeme AG), based in Andernach, Germany. The purchase price is estimated at over $100 million.

Eitan Medical produces and sells infusion pumps and software to manage the operation of the pumps. It was founded in 1996 under the name of Q-Core. Eitans bought it in 2009 from receivership for NIS 5.6 million and an obligation to inject NIS 20 million into the company. Today, it has annual revenues of more than $100 million, and employs about 400 people in Netanyahu’s offices and production facility (150 of them in Sorel’s business).

Shaul Eitan, son of the owners, recently assumed the role of CEO of Eitan Medical (its president is Boaz Eitan), after managing operations and the company’s medical pump division for the past decade. “We sold Sorrell because we had an opportunity to do so,” he said. “There are two times when you can sell a company: too soon, too late, and too soon is better. The current period is an excellent period when you can be a company with cash. Money in the market is very expensive. We’ll use the cash to further Eitan Medical’s business, as we have an opportunity It’s huge in online infusion pumps, and maybe also for buying start-ups or start-ups.”

Sorrel, created as a subsidiary within the Eitan Medical Group, develops wearable pumps for the regular injection of drugs into the body. Its products represent an alternative to syringes or injections of biological medicines, and enable treatment in the clinic to be replaced by treatment at home. Sorrell developed the product in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs in pumps.

In the past, Eitan Medical has estimated that Sorel products will hit the market by 2021. In fact, it’s about to launch its first product, and it expects to get FDA approval this year, with approvals in other countries to follow. “We’re talking about approvals for pumps that contain immune and oncology drugs, which are very important for our partner companies,” explains Eitan.

Boaz Eitan was previously a prominent figure in the Israeli tech industry. As a fighter pilot, he fell into Syrian captivity in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. After his release, he received a doctorate in physics from the Hebrew University, and in 1997 founded Saifun, a memory chip developer. Saifun was listed on NASDAQ in 2005 at a valuation of $675 million, and reached a market value of more than $1 billion, but its share price fell rapidly, and it was sold to the American flash memory company Spansion in 2007 for only $370 million.

Boaz Eitan left Spansion after the company went through bankruptcy, and with the encouragement of his son Shaul, he invested in Q-Core, which itself was going through difficult times, but which, like Eitan Medical, is now well established, thanks in part to the high demand for infusion pumps for patients with devices. Ventilation during the Covid epidemic.

In late 2021, it was reported that Eitan Medical would become a public company through its merger with NASDAQ-listed SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicle), which was the hot trend at the time, with a value of $1.3-1.4 billion. However, this was just before the trend cooled, as technology stocks on Wall Street suffered a downturn, and the move did not go through.

“Our goal is to continue to grow and create opportunities, so that we can launch the company within three years if the market is open for it,” says Shaul Eitan. He adds that when the family first invested in medical devices, they were worried about regulation, but the disadvantage became their biggest advantage. “Tali (Shaul Eitan’s mother, attorney Tali Eitan, intellectual property attorney, GW) has become an expert on the subject, and has us file our FDA approval every two years. Their products were not up to date and had to be recalled.”

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on June 20, 2023.

© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2023.