Bologna, 2nd December 2005
The total value of the deal is USD 195 million (enterprise value), already totally settled yesterday.
Datalogic will finance the acquisition (on a normalised basis) via bank debt financing of USD 95 million whilst using its own resources for the remaining USD 100 million. The agreements made with Littlejohn & Co. Ltd. - a fund management company and the sole representative of PSC shareholders - envisage, among other things, a loan from Littlejohn of some USD 90 million. This is a bridging loan, interest-free for the first month, which will be subsequently replaced by medium-/ long-term loans already granted by premier banks.
Datalogic's shareholders are called upon tomorrow to attend an Extraordinary General Meeting of shareholders to vote on a capital increase (up to a maximum of 3,496,500 ordinary shares, at a per-share price of between € 22 and € 23) to finance this acquisition. As regards this, it is recalled that Tamburi & Associati (T&A), in its capacity as Datalogic's appointed arranger of the operation, has promised, pursuant to Article 1381 of the Italian Civil Code that, if shareholders do not totally subscribe the capital increase, the unopted shares will be fully subscribed by third parties identified by T&A.
For over 30 years the PSC Group, which has its headquarters in Eugene (Oregon), has been developing, making and marketing checkout scanners for the market retail, manual barcode readers, and portable terminals. PSC is one of the pioneers in the AIDC (Automatic Identification & Data Capture) market. It is in fact to this company that the market owes introduction - in 1974 - of the first retail checkout barcode scanner.
With the PSC deal Datalogic becomes the world's third largest player in the sector, with expected 2005 consolidated pro-forma sales of over € 380 million and a leadership position in numerous business areas.
