Consort ends talks with AMS
18 Mar 2010
Consort Medical says that it has ended discussions with the board of Advanced Medical Solutions after the wound care company would not grant it access for due diligence.
Medical devices and drug delivery products supplier Consort revealed its interest in AMS at the end of February. Corsort says that AMS has rejected two indicative approaches and it is not willing to improve the terms of any offer without undertaking due diligence.
Stripping out £1.7m of abortive acquisition and factory moving costs, AMS increased its profit from £2.7m to £4.1m in 2009.
Even after the significant investment of moving to new premises, AMS still has net cash of £1.7m. This should start to rise again because capital spending will drop back from last year's unusually high level of £6.7m. There are still £24m of tax losses to be used up.
AMS intends to pay a dividend for the 2010 financial year.
