Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Ballantyne Strong, Inc. (AMEX: BTN), a provider of digital equipment, screens and managed services as well as specialty lighting equipment (the company supplies major and independent theatre chains, top arenas, theme parks and architectural sites around the world) today announced the acquisition of Convergent Corporation and its wholly owned subsidiary, Convergent Media Systems.
We told you back in April that Convergent was for sale (and received lots of letters from lawyers for our trouble).
Whilst Convergent’s European arm, five to 10 people in total, went a while back, the sale (rather than a closure) means that 120 jobs are safe.
Gary L. Cavey, President and CEO of Ballantyne Strong was quoted as saying “This is a transformative acquisition that extends Ballantyne’s core expertise into adjacent markets experiencing strong growth”.
He continued “Industry analysts expect the DOOH and Enterprise Video Solutions markets to grow at compounded annual rates of 26% and 16%, respectively, through 2015. With these markets being highly fragmented, there is a clear opportunity for Ballantyne to capture market share with a unique end-to-end, single source solution covering design and development of customer solutions, system integration, software, hardware, content creation and distribution, network monitoring and field services. With the addition of Convergent Media Systems’ existing customer base, we will be able to further leverage the established infrastructure of our Network Operations Center to enhance efficiencies within the combined company and provide a strong platform for continued growth. Following this acquisition, we will continue to have a very strong balance sheet, which will be a key differentiator in the DOOH and EVS markets, and will enable us to continue investing in growth opportunities going forward”.
The acquisition is an all-cash transaction valued at approximately USD 16 million – in our opinion that is likely about USD 10M more than it is worth and almost three times what Sony originally paid for it!
Sony acquired Thomson’s Convergent Media Systems group for USD 6.5 million back in January 2010
October 1st, 2013 at 14:53 @662
“HOUSE!!” … Oh sorry, thought we were playing “Buzzword Bingo”?