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AnonymousInactivehttp://www.reuters.com/article/mnaNewsTechMediaTelco/idUSLG31582620091116
CANON TO BUY OCE CORP
FOR $1.09bl.
Canon
buys Dutch Oce for $1.1 bln, fights Ricoh
* Canon to offer 8.60 euros/shr, including dividend
*
Deal worth 1.5 bln euros including debt, other obligations
* Oce
management and supervisory board support offer
* Some pref holders
and shareholders support deal
* Oce shares up 68.5 pctTOKYO/AMSTERDAM,
Nov 09 – Japan’s Canon plans to buy Dutch copier and printer maker
Oce for 730 million euros ($1.09 billion), challenging rivals Ricoh and
Xerox in a hunt for growth during the sector downturn.Copier and
digital camera maker Canon and Oce said in a joint statement Monday that
Canon intends to offer 8.60 euros per share, or 730 million euros, for
Oce’s outstanding shares. The offer represents a premium of 70 percent
to Oce’s Friday close.Canon’s offer follows little over a year
after Japan’s Ricoh, the world’s largest copier maker, bought U.S.
office equipment distributor Ikon Office Solutions, a deal which hit
Canon’s U.S. operations hard as Canon machines had represented 60
percent of the products Ikon handled before the acquisition. Canon, Oce
and rivals have suffered from the economic slump, which forced companies
to cut spending, including costs on copying and printing.Oce, which was
loss-making in the past two quarters, has been cutting costs and jobs
and has not paid a final 2008 dividend, while Canon and Ricoh reported
sharp falls in their quarterly profit last month. “The deterioration of
the economic market circumstances has influenced the performance of the
industry but it was not the initiator for the strategic review process
which, after thorough and careful evaluation, led to this proposal of
joining forces with Canon,” Oce CEO Rokus van Iperen told reporters.Canon
and Oce products are mutually supplementary, with the Japanese company
having strength in regular office machines and mid- to lower-end
production printers, while Oce excels in high-end production printers
and advertisement-use large-sized printers, the Tokyo-based company
said.Production printers, or digital commercial printers, are used to
print such documents as product manuals and direct mail quickly and in
large volume, and are a fast-growing segment of the global printer
market.Oce shares were up 68.5 percent at 8.53 euros by 1119 GMT, after
earlier reaching their highest level since June last year.Including debt
and other obligations, the deal values Oce — which competes with Xerox
and Konica Minolta Holdings — at about 1.5 billion euros ($2.2
billion), Van Iperen said.HP, KYOCERA
POSSIBLE COUNTERBIDDERS
Analysts said the deal was good
for Oce shareholders, as it solved most or all of the problems the
company faced due to the drop in demand. They were divided about a
possible rival offer.SNS Securities said in a note Hewlett-Packard and
Kyocera had sufficient financing options for a counter bid, while Ricoh
and Konica Minolta currently had high debt levels and relatively low
earnings generation.Petercam analyst Eric de Graaf, however, said it was
unlikely that another bidder would emerge because of the bid price and
commitment of some shareholders and Oce’s boards.Preference share
holders Ducatus, ASR and ING — which together hold 19 percent of Oce’s
share capital — agreed to sell their interests to Canon, while Oce
shareholder Bestinver Gestion S.A. has agreed to tender its 9.5 percent
stake.Oce’s management and supervisory boards support and will recommend
the intended offer, Oce and Canon said.Canon, the world’s largest
digital camera maker, is Japan’s 6th-most valuable company with market
capitalisation totalling $50 billion. Its printers and copiers accounted
for 65 percent of total revenues in 2008.Analysts said the deal
is positive for Canon, while potentially negative for rival Japanese
copier and printer maker Konica Minolta, which is in a business alliance
with Oce.”Konica Minolta procures high-end production printing machines
from Oce, while Oce procures lower-end machines from Konica Minolta,”
Mizuho Securities analyst Ryosuke Katsura said.”(The) chances are Canon
machines will replace Konica Minolta gear in this relationship,” he
said.Shares in Canon closed down 1.5 percent at 3,370 yen ahead of the
announcement, underperforming the benchmark Nikkei average .N225, which
gained 0.2 percent.http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3637458
Canon to acquire biggest European printer
maker Oce of Netherlands
Canon Inc. said Monday it will
buy out Oce NV of the Netherlands, the biggest printer maker in Europe,
through a tender offer worth about 730 million euros (some 100 billion
yen) to create a global leader in the printing industry.In what will be
Canon’s largest merger and acquisition, the Japanese company said it
will buy all outstanding shares in Oce for 8.60 euros per share.The move
by the Japanese maker of digital cameras and printers comes as the
global economic downturn has dented sales of office machines, including
ink-jet printers.Canon plans to launch the friendly takeover bid between
January and March with the aim of making the Dutch company a wholly
owned subsidiary.By putting Oce under its wing, Canon officials said the
Japanese company aims to capitalize on the Netherlands-based firm’s
strong sales clout in Europe and the United States.As Canon specializes
in small printers for office use and Oce is strong in the area of large,
high-speed printers, Canon is aiming to raise its global
competitiveness by building up its product lineup, the officials said.Canon
President Tsuneji Uchida said at a news conference in Tokyo he sees his
company’s partnership with Oce as a ”marriage” with a good partner
that will yield benefits in their printer business.”The products we
sell and our targeted customer bases are different, so we believe that
by teaming up with Oce, we can come up with a full product lineup and
expand our market, and are aiming to be No. 1 in the printing
industry,” Uchida said.Anton Schaaf, Oce’s chief technology officer and
chief operating officer, told the same news conference, ”This
collaboration will significantly strengthen our distribution power by
combining our sales networks in Asia, the United States and Europe.”Oce’s
sales network has spread to more than 30 countries, mainly in Europe
and the United States, with about 40 percent of its revenues coming from
the United States. Founded in 1877, Oce’s 2008 revenues were roughly
2.9 billion euros.Uchida did not give numerical targets for profit or
sales following the takeover, simply reiterating that the two companies’
products and services are ”complementary.”He said it will take about
three years for the synergy effect of their integration to be translated
into revenues.Canon has reported its group net profit and sales for the
last business year to December fell 36.7 percent to 309.15 billion yen
and 8.6 percent to 4.09 trillion yen, respectively, marking their first
drops in nine years partly due to falling demand amid the global
economic slowdown. -
AuthorNovember 17, 2009 at 11:01 AM
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