Tag: content marketing

Oct 24 (Reuters) – Medtronic Plc (MDT.N) said on Monday it would spin off two of its smaller businesses into a new company to streamline its portfolio and increase the pace of revenue growth.

Though the two businesses – patient monitoring and respiratory interventions – are relatively small, the company’s management said the spin off was part of Medtronic’s continued restructuring.

“The process continues. This is a next step. This isn’t necessarily the last step,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Geoffrey Martha said in a conference call.

Medtronic, the world’s largest standalone medical device maker, has been restructuring its business over the last few years. In 2018, the company announced a restructuring plan expected to help them save $500 million to $700 million annually over five years.

The two businesses contributed $2.2 billion, or around 7%, to Medtronic’s revenue in the fiscal year ended April 29. They have more than 8,000 employees globally.

“One of the pushbacks on Medtronic has been that the organization is too big and complex,” wrote Evercore ISI analyst Vijay Kumar in a note, adding the spin off would help narrow Medtronic’s focus.

The separation, expected to be completed in the next 12 to 18 months, will also help the company unlock value from the two divested businesses.

The patient monitoring technology portfolio includes Nellcor pulse oximetry and BIS brain monitoring, while the respiratory interventions business comprises ventilators and breathing systems.

US companies such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), General Electric (GE.N) and 3M Co (MMM.N)

The world’s 550 million smallholder farmers are amongst its poorest inhabitants, eking out a subsistence on farms smaller than 10 hectares. With minimal financial resources, they face unending challenges from weather, disease, pests, weeds, uncertain prices, and highly seasonal growing conditions.

Helping these people would seem an unlikely business prospect for a large multinational like Bayer, a global leader in life sciences. Yet, as a previous article on HBR.org has described, Bayer has successfully teamed up with private and public sector organizations to give smallholder crop farmers in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh access to markets, financing, high-quality agricultural inputs, and education on contemporary farming and business practices. The system is based on a network of independently managed Better Life Farming Centers, each connecting up to 500 smallholder farmers to the capabilities, products, and services of Bayer and partner corporations and NGOs. This new inclusive ecosystem is already lifting a million farmers out of poverty while expanding the company’s market reach.

Bayer has been following a similar path to address the plight of hundreds of thousands of marginalized dairy ranchers with more than 24 million livestock in Southeast Mexico and Central America, and is experiencing similar results.

The problem

The typical small dairy rancher has about 25-30 head of cattle, grazing on as many hectares. They sell their daily milk production to local milk processors and artisanal cheese producers, generating bi-weekly cash payments that they use to pay workers, cancel some debts, and cover farm operating expenses. In the rainy and