In the first nine months of 2025, Danaher recorded its largest asset impairment in more than two decades. It also reorganised its reporting segments that impact how goodwill is accounted for. Such accounting changes are worth exploring in parallel to Danaher’s Life Sciences segment challenges. 

Before we discuss Danaher’s accounting, our research can provide helpful context. Last year, we published research on Cytiva, Danaher’s upstream and downstream bioprocessing, how Danaher merged Pall into Cytiva, and the underlying moat and margin profile of its mission critical chromatography business. 

Back in the 1960s, before the word ‘biopharma’ existed, Pharmacia was focused on refining proteins. Launched in 1997, Pharmacia’s ÄKTA system, Swedish for purification, is the most effective separation system globally and is Cytiva’s flagship chromatography product today. Cytiva has an estimated 80-90% market share in single-use chromatography skids and offers a range of systems to serve lab-scale experiments up to commercial-scale production. Chromatography is arguably the most important process for customers as the resin accounts for ~50% of the manufacturing operating cost and only 5% of the final biologic cost. - IP Research, Danaher Biotechnology: Cytiva & Downstream Bioprocessing

One risk we highlighted in our research was how Cytiva’s free cash flow had effectively funded large bets into gene and cell therapy via the acquisition of Aldevron. In 2021, Danaher acquired Aldevron for $9.6bn, or ~24x forward revenue. This is very different to Danaher’s historical acquisition multiples. When questioned, Danaher management claimed Aldevron was ‘strategic’. At the time of the Aldevron acquisition, COVID was driving a boom in mRNA: