3M’s Health Care Business to Spin Off in April
3M’s plan to spin off its health care business will come to fruition on April 1.
Known as Solventum, the spin-off will continue operating from 3M’s Maplewood headquarters for now, according to a Feb. 20 registration document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing, which spans over 300 pages, contained a trove of details about the new entity, which employs about 22,000 people and operates in more than 90 countries.
In 2023, 3M’s health care business pulled in $8.2 billion in annual revenue, or about a quarter of the company’s total revenue. The filing noted that the health care unit consistently recorded over $8 billion in revenue in each of the last three years.
“We believe Solventum will deliver growth at attractive margins with the mission of enabling better, smarter, safer health care to improve lives,” company officials wrote in the filing.
Both 3M and Solventum will operate as separate, publicly traded companies.
Solventum will operate across four business units: surgical and wound supplies, dental products, health information systems, and purification and filtration technologies. The first category, which operated as Medical Solutions under 3M and generated more than half of the health care unit’s total revenue, will be known as “MedSurg.”
After the spin-off, 3M will retain 19.9% of Solventum’s outstanding shares, according to the filing.
“3M intends to responsibly dispose of such shares after the distribution as soon as a disposition is warranted consistent with the business reasons for the retention of those shares. Such dispositions will be effected through one or more sales of such shares of Solventum common stock (not later than five years after the distribution),” the company said in the filing.
In a note to shareholders, 3M chairman and CEO Michael Roman said the separation “provides tremendous opportunities for our business, as we work to continue to build long-term value.”
3M first revealed the name of the spin-off in November, and first unveiled plans to form the new entity in June 2022.
