Abbott CEO White optimistic on Alere buy

Abbott (NYSE:ABT) CEO Miles White is optimistic about the company’s upcoming acquisition of Alere despite previous concerns and attempts to sink the deal, according to a SeekingAlpha transcript of the company’s Q1 earnings call.

White called the company a “fixer upper”, but stated that he was “pleased to have the resolution of this matter behind us.”

“We want to go forward and close this deal. We want to close it in the next few months,” White said, according to SeekingAlpha. “So, I’m looking to close this hopefully, and I’m – this is just a guesstimate – by end of summer, allowing for enough time for what Alere has got to do with the shareholders ,and so forth.”

White added that Abbott would need to divest itself of certain businesses to see the deal to completion due to anti-trust and regulatory approvals they hold, but was positive that the deal would be a net gain for the company.

“So at some point, I’d say, we’re the same company, but with a much better portfolio. And we live to the investment identity that we’ve been creative and that’s our intent, that’s why we’ve made the moves we did with both St. Jude and Alere. And even though, we’ve got to put some time and investment into these businesses to help achieve the growth aspirations we have. We just look at the strength of the portfolios across the board. I don’t think we’ve ever had rich new product portfolios coming like we see across these businesses today,” White said, according to SeekingAlpha.

Earlier this week, Abbott handily beat expectations on Wall Street in its 1st quarterly earnings release since its blockbuster, $25 billion acquisition of St. Jude Medical closed in January.

The Chicago-area healthcare giant posted profits of $419 million, or 24¢ per share, on sales of $6.34 billion for the 3 months ended March 31, representing bottom-line growth of 32.6% on sales growth of 29.7% compared with Q1 2016.

Adjusted to exclude 1-time items, earnings per share were 48¢, a full nickel ahead of The Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $6.15 billion.

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