MUNICH (Reuters) -Siemens AG reduced its stake in medical technology company Siemens Healthineers by nearly 2 percentage points to 71.12%, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday.
Healthineers’ CEO Bernd Montag said earlier this year that the company would welcome a stake reduction by its parent company, calling it “very good” for the long term.
At Siemens Healthineers’ market price, the stake is worth 1.03 billion euros ($1.18 billion).
Shares in Siemens Healthineers were down 3.15% at 1207 GMT.
Siemens Chief Financial Officer Ralf Thomas had announced plans to sell up to 5% of Healthineers shares to partially finance two multi-billion dollar software acquisitions in the United States.
In February, Siemens AG had already raised 1.45 billion euros by selling a 2.4% stake in Healthineers.
“We have repeatedly and clearly stated that we will reduce our stake in Siemens Healthineers as part of the acquisitions of Altair and Dotmatics, without prejudice to any strategic decisions,” a Siemens spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday.
The decision on whether and to what extent Siemens will further withdraw from the medical technology group is expected by the end of the year.
($1 = 0.8734 euros)
(Reporting by Alexander Huebner, Writing by Miranda Murray and Matthias Williams, Editing by Rachel More)
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