Well, the market sure likes Veeco's buy this morning:
Veeco up 21% on Ion Tech buy
Acquisition makes company player in telecom
By Sam Ames, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:29 PM ET Oct 15, 1999
NewsWatch
PLAIN VIEW, N.Y. (CBS.MW) -- Shares of Veeco jumped 21 percent Friday after the
company agreed to buy privately held Ion Tech in a move to enter the telecommunications
equipment market.
Under terms of the
agreement released in a
statement, shareholders of
privately held Ion will
receive 1.5 million shares of
Veeco (VECO: news,
msgs) stock, worth $45
million at current prices.
Veeco said the deal will
close in November, and will
be immediately accretive to
consensus 2000 earnings
estimates. Analysts
surveyed by First Call expect the company to post $1.99 per share in year 2000.
Shares of Veeco rose 5 3/8 to 30.
"This merger with Ion Tech is a significant extension of Veeco's
ion beam technology and provides access to an important growth
market...optical telecommunications," said Edward H. Braun,
chairman, president and CEO of Veeco in a statement. "Veeco
will now have strategic growth opportunities in all three
information-age markets: data storage, semiconductor, and now
opto-telecommunications."
About 50 percent of Veeco's sales are from ion-deposition and
etching machines used to make thin-film magnetic tape heads for
computer disk drives; Veeco has about 70% of that market. The
Plain View, N.Y. based company also makes measurement
equipment that makes sure tape heads and semiconductor
computer chips are made properly.
Ion Tech, based in Fort Collins, Colo., manufactures coatings
for ion beam light filters that are used in the telecommunications
industry. The filters go into optical fibre cable networks and help
increase the capacity of those systems. |
