Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Iomega Buys ExcelStor

San Diego-based Iomega said today that it has agreed to acquire ExcelStor, a manufacturer of hard disk drives and other external storage products; Excelstor is the manufacturer of Iomega's REV products and some of its external hard disk drives. According to Iomega, it will issue 84 million shares of common stock for ExcelStor Great Wall Technology Limited (Cayman Islands) and Shenzhen ExcelStor Technology Limited (PRC). Based on Iomega's closing price Monday, the deal is worth approximately $305M. According to Iomega, ExcelStor had revenues of $707.1M for 2006, and ships more than 20 million hard drive devices a year. ExcelStor is a subsidiary of Great Wall Technology Company Limited, based in Beijing. After the closing of the deal, Iomega said that GWT will own 43% of Iomega's common stock, and will become the largest shareholder of the firm. GWT itself is owned by the Chinese government through China Electronics Corporation. Iomega was advised by Thomas Weisel Partners in the deal.

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