are some other companies who do things quite well, too. And when they have developed a proven technology that is complementary to ours, and when there is a good fit, an acquisition makes sense for both scientific and business reasons.
Such was the case on September 11th, when Waters announced
the acquisition of Micromass Limited, of Manchester, England. This acquisition immediately
gives us a strong competitive position in the mass spectrometry marketplace in general,
and in LC-MS in particular, one of the
fastest-growing segments of the liquid chromatography market. Micromass is a very
profitable and well-managed company. And the addition of world leading MS to our product
portfolio allows us
to improve our already strong position with pharmaceutical companies. With this accretive
acquisition, Waters now has leading positions in three complementary technologies –
HPLC, thermal analysis and mass spectrometry. And our potential marketplace has increased
from $2 to $3 billion.
In addition, last year we purchased YMC, Inc., which markets premium HPLC columns and bulk packing materials for North America. Annual revenues exceed $7 million. This addition nicely augments the very profitable consumables segment of our business.
In the years to come, we plan to make similar, selective additions to expand our range of products and technologies.
We hope that the preceding pages have
conveyed how we have and how we will continue marrying good business with good science for
good results. It is the way things have always been done at Waters. And after nearly 40
years, we seem to be getting the formula down pretty well.
