VISTA Today’s daily news briefs keep you up to date with what’s happening around Chester County.

Thoma Bravo LLC Buys iPipeline

Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm has acquired cloud service provider iPipeline for an undisclosed amount.

Exton based iPipeline was found in 1995, and has since grown to over 400 employees worldwide, as the premier provider of SaaS solutions. SaaS drives straight-through processing for the insurance and financial services industry by aggregating more than 120 carriers, 875 distributors and financial institutions in a cloud-based environment.

Thoma Bravo is well known for strategic purchases to create value by collaborating with the company’s management to improve business operations and provide additional capital to support growth initiatives.

“We’re pleased to be joining Thoma Bravo, which has a track record of picking exceptional high-growth vertical market technology companies,” said Tim Wallace, chief executive officer of iPipeline. “We expect our relationship with Thoma Bravo will help fuel organic growth and pursue complementary acquisitions that increase our value to the insurance industry as a whole.“

Diffinity Genomics Acquired by Chiral Technologies

Chiral Technologies has bought the assets of Diffinity Genomics based in West Henrietta, N.Y.

Diffinity Genomics has developed a new technology for the purification of nucleic acids, a development which created the basis for their products in DNA purification markets. The Diffinity RapidTip technology provides a method for rapid purification of amplified DNA fragments from Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in a single step.

West Chester based Chiral Technologies, part of Daicel Corporation, the global market leader in enantioselective chromatography, will add Diffinity’s product portfolio into a new business unit. The acquisition shows the company’s commitment to providing the health sciences industry with innovative separation technologies.

Joseph Marasco, Ph.D., CEO of Diffinity Genomics, stated: “We are very pleased to become part of Chiral Technologies.  We are confident that this is an ideal fit with Chiral Technologies as a multinational development partner to commercialize Diffinity’s unique technologies.”

Vishay Announces Lower than Expected Q2 Earnings

Malvern based Vishay Intertechnology released disappointing second quarter and half year results for the period ended July 4, 2015.

Vishay, a Fortune 1000 Company and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of discrete semiconductors and passive components, reported that revenues were down at $590.5 million for the quarter, compared to $641.9 million for same quarter last year.

The net earnings attributable to Vishay stockholders were $26.3 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, compared to $35.6 million, or $0.23 per diluted share for the previous year.

“In the second quarter Vishay experienced a less favorable economic environment than anticipated,” said Dr. Gerald Paul, President and Chief Executive Officer, “we did not achieve the projected revenue increase, but rather a repetition of the first quarter with similarly solid results – we continue to expect a free cash flow generation of substantially over $100 million for the year 2015.”

Evolve IP Wins Product of the Year for the Third Time

Proving that quality gets rewarded, Evolve IP, the Cloud Services Company, announced that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named them as a three-time winner of its Unified Communications Product of the Year Award.

Wayne based company’s winning product fully integrates voice, video, instant messaging & presence, desktop sharing, and audio/web conferencing. Evolve IP was also praised for its ability to integrate critical communications features into a company’s existing applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Lync, Google Apps, and salesforce.com.

“We appreciate the continued recognition of our UCaaS solution; and with over 1,400 customers across four continents, the market’s adoption confirms that our service is truly exceptional,” said Tim Allen, Chief Sales Officer of Evolve IP. “The Evolve IP UCaaS product solves critical issues across an organization”

Medecision Recognized by the Healthcare Informatics “HCI 100”

Medecision has made it onto the annual Healthcare Informatics “HCI 100” list of the highest-revenue healthcare IT companies.

The Wayne based leader in population health management solutions for risk-bearing entities, owes its success to growth in providers and payer organizations’ desire to drive transformative change, and to share or assume population risk. Its system helps create accountability for measurable improvement across the healthcare ecosystem.

The Healthcare Informatics “HCI 100” list compiles the leading 100 vendors with the highest revenues resulting from healthcare IT products and services earned in the US.

“Medecision is proud to be included among the HCI 100. As the U.S. healthcare system embraces shared risk payment models,” said Deborah M. Gage, president and CEO, Medecision, “we are growing our emerging leadership position in population health management,”

AMETEK Posts Record Second Quarter Results

AMETEK posted impressive financial results for the second quarter of 2015 with both revenue and earnings showing a bump.

The Berwyn based company’s sales of $1.0 billion for the second quarter were up 1% compared to the same period last year.  Operating income also increased 4% to a record $240.3 million, with operating margins going up half a percent to 23.9%.  These factors helped drive AMETEK to another record, with earnings of $0.64 per diluted share up 5% from the previous year.

“AMETEK had another strong quarter.  We delivered record levels of operating income and earnings per share as a result of the continued strong execution of our Four Growth Strategies,” said Frank S. Hermance, AMETEK Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.  “Despite continued softness in the global economy, our businesses performed well, allowing us to meet the high end of our second quarter earnings expectations and to reaffirm our full year earnings guidance.”