Solidifying a mutual admiration that goes back many years, Miranda Technologies, based in Montreal, Quebec, has entered into an agreement to acquire all of the outstanding shares of privately held NVISION, of Grass Valley, CA. The transaction, valued at $40 million, is expected to close by Dec. 31.
Strath Goodship, Miranda’s president and chief executive officer, called NVISION “a natural fit with our branding, interfacing and multiviewer product lines,” that will also bring considerable technical expertise into the Miranda fold.
The strategy is to add NVISION’s expertise (led by founder and chairman of the board, Birney Dayton) and high-definition product line of large-scale routers and master control systems to Miranda’s portfolio of Kaleido X multi-image display systems, branding systems and smaller HD signal distribution systems. There is some overlap of products that will be addressed in the future.
NVISION will continue to operate from its Grass Valley headquarters and become a wholly owned subsidiary of Miranda. No staff changes were anticipated, and several people close to the deal said the NVISION name would be retained for the foreseeable future.
The two companies have a history. In 2002, Miranda made an offer to purchase NVISION from ADC in 2002. (That year NVISION exhibited on Miranda’s booth at NAB.) The deal was never completed. More recently, they have worked together on several large projects, including the new MLB Network, set to launch on Jan. 1, which has installed a Kaleido-X multi-image display system and an NVISION NV8576 digital router to create a large-scale, highly integrated signal distribution system for its new HD facility in Secaucus, NJ.
At this year’s NAB convention, NVISION announced a technology partnership with Miranda to tightly control Miranda’s Kaleido-X multi-image display system for accurate input monitoring via a single multicore cable.
“We know the folks at Miranda very well and feel we have a lot of strong synergies that can be exploited for both of our benefit,” said Chuck Meyer, president and CEO of NVISION. “We really now have the ability to target customers we couldn’t before because we can now fill in some missing gaps in our product line.”
Meyer said the combined portfolios will help it win new business because full integration of systems is much more important to customers. The idea is to create a seamless branding, master control, monitoring, routing user interface that controls and streamlines multiple tasks.
By joining forces with Miranda, NVISION increases its prescience overseas and across North America via Miranda’s extensive global distribution network and the ability to offer a broader range of products.
For the twelve months ending Sept. 30, NVISION, a provider of signal routing systems for the broadcast industry, has reported revenues of approximately $34 million and gross margins in line with Miranda’s.
Goodship said that Miranda has $86 million (Canadian dollars) in cash as of Sept. 30.
“Looking at our two companies, I think we can do better together than we can as independent companies,” Meyer said. “With the challenging economy we find ourselves in, it’s important to move as fast as you can to fill gaps in your product line. With the agreement, we feel we’ve done that.”
