Another Massachusetts medical equipment company is being gobbled up by Medtronic PLC.In a deal announced Monday, Medtronic said it would buy Framingham’s HeartWare International Inc. for $1.1 billion. The $58-a-share cash offer for HeartWare, which makes a ventricular assist device for patients with end-stage heart failure, marked a 93 percent premium over the company’s closing stock price on Friday.
The deal is the largest for Medtronic since its $42.9 billion buyout early last year of Covidien PLC, a hospital supply company that was based in Ireland and managed out of Mansfield. That transaction, structured as a so-called inversion, allowed Medtronic to shift its corporate headquarters to Dublin for tax purposes, though its corporate staff remains in Minneapolis.
Medtronic plans to incorporate HeartWare, which has about 625 employees in Massachusetts, Florida, Minnesota, and Germany, into a business unit that already sells diagnostic tools and therapies for heart failure patients. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of October, but Medtronic officials said it was too soon to determine whether jobs would be cut.
“Heart failure is the largest single market category within cardiac medicine,’’ said Michael Coyle, president of Medtronic’s cardiac and vascular group, in an interview. “We’ve been looking to build out capability in end-stage failure, and that’s what HeartWare does for us.’’
Medtronic’s competitor, St. Jude Medical Inc. of St. Paul, last year paid $3.4 billion for a rival maker of ventricular assist devices, California-based Thoratec Corp.
HeartWare’s stock almost doubled to $57.79 on Monday. But it remains well below its price of $94 a share last July. The stock had fallen about 70 percent due to problems with a clinical trial, product recalls in 2014 and 2015, and uncertainty about its future pipeline.
HeartWare’s main product, approved by US regulators in 2012, is a mechanical pump used as a “bridge therapy’’ to support heart function and blood flow in end-stage heart failure patients who are awaiting a heart transplant. The company plans to seek federal approval this year to use it as a “destination therapy’’ for a larger number of patients not waiting for a transplant.
“The market is going to be driven by the destination therapy indication,’’ said Danielle Antalffy, a medical devices analyst for Boston health care investment firm Leerink Partners, who projected that HeartWare would begin making money for Medtronic in about two years.
Robert Weisman can be reached at robert.weisman@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeRobW.
