Interesting that so many think that the Xyplex deal will be great...
Whittaker purchased Xyplex in March 1996 for $117.5M and at that time most of the company's losses were buried deep in the Raytheon financial reports, less than 2 years later Whittaker sells them to MRV for $35M. How is it that anyone can believe this is a good purchase, or that Whittaker have sufficient cash to purchase the outstanding warrants?
It certainly wasn't Whittaker Communications (aka Hughes LAN Systems) management that dragged the value of this business down 70% in two years time; within 3 months of the 1996 purchase, 99.9% of the former WC/HLS management was replaced by Xyplex management and operational control (check the past SEC filings and press releases for Whittaker). The end result was a reverse takeover of WC by Xyplex, and despite strong warnings to Whittaker Corporate regarding the financial ongoings of Xyplex (this company was spending cash like it was Cisco), Whittaker Corporate management went ahead and rolled over to the Xyplex management influence.
So, just a word of caution... read the past SEC reports from Whittaker carefully, and if you are an investor in MRV, I'd stongly recommend that you follow the management control over this $35M investment very, very carefully...
Bottom line -- in my opinion, there are no positives in the purchase of Xyplex unless MRV is wise enough to strip out ALL of the operating infrastructure of Xyplex, take it's technology out of the east coast, and run. I'm sure that Alibrandi is a pretty happy guy right about now... his albatros is now gone, and Brancati has long been shuffled off to other green pastures.
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