Industrial PC maker Ennoconn Corp (樺漢科技) yesterday said it plans to acquire a 29.4 percent stake in information technology solution provider S&T AG for 152.83 million euros (US$168.6 million), in an effort to enhance its global competitiveness.
S&T announced at the same time that it would purchase a 29 percent share in Kontron AG — Germany’s leading embedded computer technology provider, Ennoconn said.
“Ennoconn will become the largest shareholder of S&T and the main investor of Kontron through the deal with S&T,” Ennoconn chief financial officer Tsao Hsi-chung (曹錫仲) told a press conference at the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
S&T has strong software integration technologies and more than 1,800 software engineers worldwide, while Kontron is known for its brand management and marketing resources, Tsao said.
Ennoconn, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), will leverage its manufacturing capability and its parent company’s global resources to work with S&T and Kontron, he said.
The collaboration will provide global customers with complete solutions in the fields of industrial automation, network security, cloud-computing communication, big data and Internet of Things devices, he added.
Ennoconn president Chu Fu-chuan (朱復銓) said he expects the trilateral collaboration to help boost the company’s share of the global industrial PC market in the next two to three years.
The company plans to issue corporate bonds or seek a capital injection to finance the deal, Chu said.
Ennoconn currently has cash and cash equivalents of between NT$1.6 billion and NT$1.7 billion (US$50.6 million and US$53.7 million), he said.
The two companies plan to complete the deal by the end of this year at the earliest, and Ennoconn will start to book contributions from S&T in the second or third quarter of next year, Chu said.
The deal marks Ennoconn’s third acquisition this year. The company in January partnered with Kontron to buy a 49 percent stake in the German company’s subsidiary in Canada for US$57.3 million and in July acquired a 60 percent stake in AIS Cayman Technology Group for US$5.06 million to gain access to AIS Cayman’s human machine interface technology.
The Taiwanese company’s combined net profit in the first half of this year totaled NT$497.14 million, climbing 32 percent from last year’s NT$376.62 million.
Its sales in the first nine months of the year jumped 34.84 percent annually to NT$10.51 billion, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
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