Earnings

Thermo Fisher Q4 results top expectations on Life Tech buy

An employee uses a Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. X Series 2 inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry machine to analyze copper concentrate samples inside the Central Geological Laboratory in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Brent Lewin | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world's largest maker of scientific instruments, reported better-than-expected quarterly profit and sales, boosted by the contribution from the Life Technologies acquisition.

Thermo Fisher said net profit rose to $601.2 million, or $1.49 per share, in the fourth quarter from $342.1 million, or 92 cents a share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, Thermo Fisher earned $1.99 per share. Analysts on average had expected $1.94, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue jumped 30 percent to $4.49 billion, topping Wall Street's average estimate of $4.38 billion.

With the addition of Life Tech business, Thermo Fisher's life sciences business reported a surge in sales to $1.19 billion, compared with $192 million a year earlier.

The business provides reagents, instruments and consumables used in biological and medical research.

The company's other three businesses reported sales growth of 2 percent to 4 percent.

The purchase of Life Tech for more than $13 billion was completed in early 2014.

Thermo Fisher, which paid down $3.8 billion of debt in 2014 related to the Life purchase, said it was on track to achieve $300 million in cost saving synergies in year three.

Thermo was due to provide its financial forecasts for 2015 later on Thursday during a conference call with analysts.