ST. PETERSBURG, FL -- Jabil Circuit will acquire the manufacturing arm
of Varian Inc. for $195 million, the company said today.
Jabil, a Tier
1 EMS company, will buy Varian Electronics Manufacturing, in a deal
expected to close in early March. The Varian EMS unit has annual sales of about $200
million.
At $195 million, Jabil will pay six to seven times Varian's
EBITA. Jabil will also inherit about $35 million to $40 million in
inventory.
About 85% of Varian's manufacturing business is contract work for
medical, communications, industrial and aerospace. Varian will remain a
customer, said Tim Main, president and CEO of Jabil, on a conference
call Monday.
Medical makes up 40% of Varian's sales, aerospace 15%,
instruments 35% and communications 10%.
AUSTIN, TX - Test tool provider National Instruments has acquired Toronto-based EDA company Electronics Workbench. Financial
details were not disclosed.
The deal is expected to close in the March
quarter.
The companies have worked together for years, and National Instruments
said the acquisition would strengthen the integration between
functional test and design tools and advance graphical system design
technology.
National Instruments said it would retain all of Electronics
Workbench's approximately 50 worldwide employees, and the EDA firm may
hire additional personnel after budgeting talks concluded.
"Our
customers are not satisfied with the integration of design, simulation
and test tools in the industry today," said Ray Almgren, National
Instruments' vice president of product marketing and academic
relations. "A graphical system design platform that integrates these
disparate tools will increase productivity and make testing throughout
the design process more seamless. Our acquisition of Electronics
Workbench is a major step forward in making this vision a reality and
satisfying the needs of the design engineering community in industry
and academia."
The companies have collaborated for several years to integrate their
tools. The Electronics Workbench acquisition adds graphical design and
simulation software to National Instruments' platform of graphical
development tools.
Almgren said National wasn't acquiring Electronics Workbench in order
to become a pure-play EDA company like Mentor Graphics or Cadence.
"I think that goes back to the frame of reference the industry has:
You're either an EDA company or a test company. We're going to become a
system design tool company. We're going to innovate on a vector that
these guys simply aren't interested in working on," Almgren said. "Our
customers tend to be in functional test. The integration between design
and test is not very good. In the short term, we can make a lot of
improvements."
Bill Wignall, president of Electronics Workbench, explained, "The
reality is that Cadence and Mentor are all about IC design. The place
where design and test are already integrated is in the IC world.
There's no wish from this acquisition to take on those guys. We want to
do for system design what's already been done for IC design."
National Instruments will retain all Electronics Workbench employees
and continue to operate the company as a separate entity in Toronto.
Development teams will work to further integrate the products and
knowledge of the two companies.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of
National Instruments, Electronics Workbench plans to continue to
develop and offer its complete line of design automation software and
directly support educational initiatives with uninterrupted support to
participating schools.
The acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on National
Instruments' earnings for the first quarter of 2005.
ROGERS, CT - Rogers Corp. has filed suit in U.S. district court
claiming a larger competitor is infringing on a pair of patents
through the manufacture of one of its high frequency laminates.
In the suit, Rogers alleges Isola Laminate Systems is infringing by
making, using, selling and importing a material known as IS640, a
low-loss circuit board laminate.
Isola responded that it will vigorously defend itself
against the claims.