- The technology company has sold its security line to Vitaprotech and will invest proceeds into building the IoT solution.
- With a new CEO at the helm, the company aims to strengthen and expand its solutions for healthcare and other business sectors with specialty and customized technologies.
Technology company Identiv is repositioning its business, homing in on specialty IoT solutions for emerging opportunities including the healthcare segment.
As a result of this pivot, it is selling its security business line division to security solutions provider Vitaprotech. With the sale, Identiv will gain roughly $130 million of net proceeds that will now be reinvested into IoT solutions growth.
A key part of the restructuring is the appointment of a new CEO, Kirsten Newquist, to steer the company toward opportunities in its IoT business. Newquist had been the company’s president of IoT business for the past four months and previously served as global VP at Avery Dennison Smartrac.
Company officials said they are making the moves as they see growth potential in the IoT business—especially in specialty solutions—using BLE, NFC, HF and UHF RFID, as well as dual frequency inlays. It aims to serve many industries, but is especially targeting the expanding opportunities within the healthcare market.
Three Pillars: Short, Medium and Long Term
The company’s strategy and growth plan are newly divided into three pillars, said Newquist. They are intended to cover short-, medium- and longer-term planning.
The first pillar focuses on leveraging current business channels, existing customers and the product portfolio now in place. The company will be focused on “strengthening these customer relationships, supporting our partners with joint marketing efforts and adding products to our portfolio, to serve the needs of our customers and grow our market share,” said Newquist.
While she says Identiv supports multiple industries and applications, much of that activity will be in healthcare, where the company already earns about 20 to 25 percent of its sales.
The company is evaluating specialty UHF applications and will be expanding its portfolio accordingly. It also has several initiatives underway related to BLE product development. It currently provides HF authentication solutions for diagnostic and medical device consumable products, NFC smart labels for auto injectors and NFC labels for liquor brands that want to strengthen consumer engagement.
Rather than pursuing the high-volume, lower cost applications for retail or logistics, the company serves use cases for new applications requiring specialized design.
“It’s an important part of our business and, quite frankly, as our customers come to us with different applications, different ideas, they cross many different industries,” Newquist said. “As long as there is compelling business case behind it, we will support emerging and different applications.”
Growth in Smart Homes, Packaging, Retail
The second pillar is intended to drive medium term expansion in the next few years, in segments such as smart home devices, smart packaging and specialty retail.
The company is in the process of mapping out how it can support and effectively serve and compete in these segments. That effort includes investing in business development, additional partnership and marketing and new products to support these markets. The two areas where early work is already underway are consumer devices and smart packaging.
Identiv may be providing products and solutions in the sector within 2025 as well as developing new partnerships for roll-out of new technologies.
Healthcare Solutions
The long-term plan is centered on high value applications within the healthcare, medical device and pharmaceutical industries. “There’s some pretty compelling trends in the healthcare space that really make this a growing opportunity [area],” said Newquist.
She pointed to examples such as the shift of healthcare from the hospital to a patient’s home, the rise in personalized medicine, and growth in biologics drugs that require stringent cold chain monitoring. There is also a rise in drug counterfeiting underway that could be mitigated with IoT technology to uniquely identify and therefore authenticate pharmaceutical products.
Identiv already has considerable traction around high value consumables both for management of medical devices and diagnostic testing, according to Newquist. The use of IoT technology can help ensure the right consumables are used with the right equipment when treating or testing patients.
She forecasts that going forward, BLE will offer opportunities for cold chain tracking in Identiv’s portfolio of technologies, to provide enhanced tracking and monitoring of temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals.
Newquist’s Background
The specialty business is where Identiv will continue to excel, Newquist added, due to its ability to design prototypes quickly so that new innovation can be put to the test. “I think because of our size and our nimbleness we’re a little bit more willing to take on newer applications that may not have the massive volumes right away.”
Newquist finds herself uniquely equipped to lead all three pillar efforts. Before her 17 years at Avery Dennison, building and growing a medical device business and developing strategies for new growth businesses (including RFID), she was part of the private equity business services sector. Prior to that, she was part of a management team that launched a startup company that they later took public.
“I have this common theme through my career of building and growing businesses, [and] putting strategies together,” she said.
The new CEO sees a correlation of that effort with the solutions Identiv aims to go after.
“We certainly have the opportunity to build a purpose-driven business, and go after applications that can provide for a smarter, healthier and more sustainable environment,” stated Newquist.