Deal values LaCie at $186 million
Seagate and LaCie have announced a deal that will see the former acquire controlling interest in the latter. LaCie is known for making external storage devices that cater predominantly to the Mac world. LaCie has traditionally used Seagate hard drives inside its external storage products. Seagate offered to purchase LaCie CEO Spruch’s and has affiliate’s 64.5% ownership in the company.
Seagate will also make a tender offer for the remaining outstanding shares in the company. Seagate offered CEO Spruch and his affiliate €4.05 per share in cash minus a potential adjustment. The final price will depend on the cash and credit position of LaCie at the closing of the deal. The price could be increased by supplement of 3% in the event that a threshold of 95% of the shares and voting rights of LaCie are reached within six months following the closing of the deal.
“With the proliferation of devices and content being shared and stored today, consumer demand for high-quality branded storage solutions continues to grow,” said Philippe Spruch, LaCie’s chairman and CEO. “We are excited about the potential for this combination to benefit customers and employees by creating significant scale and opening up new markets. We look forward to making the resources of a much larger company available to our customers around the world."
The offer values LaCie at about $186 million currently, including the acquired net cash of roughly $65 million the company holds as of March 31, 2012. The offer price is a premium of 29% on the average closing stock price for the company in the 30 trading days that ended on March 22. The LaCie board appointed an independent expert, Ricol Lasteyrie & Associés, to evaluate the fairness on the price offered for purchase. Seagate expects the transaction to be neutral to its fiscal 2013 earnings per share.
“Seagate has a strong commitment to the growing consumer storage market and bringing the most dynamic products to market. LaCie has built an exceptional consumer brand by delivering exciting and innovative high-end products for many years. This transaction would bring a highly complementary set of capabilities to Seagate, significantly expand our consumer product offerings, add a premium-branded direct-attached storage line, strengthen our network-attached storage business line and enhance our capabilities in software development,” said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO.
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