Main office
1 Becton Drive
Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417-1880
Contact
Phone: 201-847-6800
Fax: 201-847-6475
Web site
http://www.bd.com
Basics
Sector: Healthcare
Industry: Medical Instruments & Supplies
Full Time Employees: 28,018
Background
Becton, Dickinson and Company, a medical technology company, manufactures and sells medical devices, instruments, and reagents worldwide. Its BD Medical segment offers medical devices needles, syringes, and intravenous catheters for medication delivery; syringes and pen needles; prefillable drug delivery devices provided to pharmaceutical companies and sold to end-users as drug/device combinations; surgical blades and regional anesthesia needles; critical care monitoring devices; ophthalmic surgical instruments; sharps disposal containers; and home healthcare products, such as elastic bandages. The company's BD Diagnostics segment provides products for the safe collection and transport of diagnostic specimens and instruments for analysis, including preanalytical and diagnostic systems comprising integrated systems for specimen collection, a line of safety-engineered blood collection products and systems, plated media, automated blood culturing systems, molecular testing systems for sexually transmitted diseases and healthcare-associated infections, microorganism identification and drug susceptibility systems, liquid-based cytology systems for cervical cancer screening, and rapid diagnostic assays. Its BD Biosciences segment offers fluorescence activated cell sorters and analyzers, cell imaging systems, monoclonal antibodies and kits for performing cell analysis, reagent systems for life sciences research, tools to aid in drug discovery and growth of living cells and tissue, cell culture media supplements for biopharmaceutical manufacturing, and diagnostic assays. Becton, Dickinson and Company serves hospitals, laboratories, clinics, consumers and retail pharmacies, public health agencies, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, healthcare workers, blood banks, patients, physicians' office practices, and academic and government institutions. The company was founded in 1897 and is headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.
Officers
Mr. Edward J. Ludwig, 57
Chairman, Chief Exec. Officer, Pres
Mr. John R. Considine, 57
Vice Chairman, Chief Financial Officer and Sr. Exec. VP
Mr. Vincent A. Forlenza, 54
Exec. VP
Mr. Gary M. Cohen, 48
Exec. VP
Mr. William A. Kozy, 56
Exec. VP
Former officers
Mr. Henry P. Becton
Dir. Emeritus
Sheffield Fellow, Faculty of Engineering, Yale University
Henry P. Becton is the retired Vice Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Becton Dickinson and Company. The firm was founded in 1897 by his father, the late Maxwell W. Becton, and the late Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Sr.
The younger Mr. Becton joined the company in the fall of 1937, the same year he graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. He spent his first year and a half on the road as a salesman for the Company. Returning to the Company's offices in 1939, he was elected to the Board of Directors and he served as Secretary of the Company. In 1944, after he returned from active duty in England during the war, Mr. Becton became the Company's Assistant Treasurer. In 1948, he was made Executive Vice President. From 1961 through February 1987, he was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors.
Mr. Becton was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors in May 1972, then Vice Chairman in December 1972. In 1977, he was elected Chairman of the Board again. Then in 1980, at age 65, he retired as Chairman and was Vice Chairman until his retirement from that office in February 1987. He remains Director Emeritus.
Mr. Becton has served as a Trustee of Fairleigh Dickinson University from 1948 to 1994. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors of National Community Bank of New Jersey, now National Community Division of The Bank of New York from 1947 to 1993.
Long active in a variety of civic, social and community organizations, Mr. Becton has served as borough councilman of Rutherford, New Jersey; Director of the Bergen County and the New Jersey Chambers of Commerce; Chairman of the New Jersey Employers Legislative Committee; President of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra; and Chairman of the Standing Committee for Clinical Thermometers at the U.S. Bureau of Standards.
Mr. Becton resides with his wife in Englewood, New Jersey.
Fundamentals
Total Cash: 919.64M
Total Debt: 1.17B
Book Value Per Share: 18.538
Operating Cash Flow: 1.43B
Levered Free Cash Flow: 468.17M
Revenue: 6.56B
Ownership
Shares Outstanding: 244.06M
Float: 229.80M
% Held by Insiders: 5.82%
% Held by Institutions : 86.00%
Recent developments
Becton Dicksinson Gains on Upbeat Note
Friday April 4, 3:27 pm ET
Becton Dickinson Advances After Analyst Says Company Is Poised to Grow Over Next 2 Years
NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Becton Dickinson & Co. climbed on Friday after an analyst called the medical technology company "one of the safer plays" in the healthcare sector.
Lazard Capital Markets analyst Jeffrey Frelick said in a client note that Becton Dickinson's medical-supply business, which accounts for 70 percent of its sales, was well-insulated from the risk that Medicare will lower reimbursement rates, while its diagnostic business is involved in high-growth areas.
Frelick said he expected per-share earnings growth of 12 percent in 2008 as well as 2009 for Becton Dickinson, and expected future earnings to be led by growth in revenue from its safety devices, flow cytometry and pharmaceutical systems.
"The company's business is in sound health and, importantly, is not tied to the performance of one or two key products," Frelick said.
Frelick rates Becton Dickinson, based in Franklin Lakes, N.J., a "Buy" and maintains a price target of $104. He predicts earnings per share of $4.94 in 2009, ahead of Wall Street estimates. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect the company to earn, on average, $4.84 per share in 2009.
Shares of Becton Dickinson gained $1.93, or 2.3 percent, to $86.12 in afternoon trading.
Selected product line
http://cyto.mednet.ucla.edu/instrume.htm
Share price
King Capital Investment Group
http://kingcapital.tripod.com