Strategy in TECH...
On Wednesday, at a specially convened meeting of the Board of Directors for Onkyo Home Entertainment Co. Ltd. (Onkyo), company directors formally voted to authorize the transfer of Onkyo’s home AV division to the partnership of VOXX, Intl. and Sharp Corporation, in a deal valued at $30.3 million. The transaction is pending shareholder approval. This development represents real progress on a deal that had appeared to be bogged down recently.
Oh-oh! I thought today I would be confirming that the VOXX/Sharp/Onkyo definitive agreement – which was supposed to be concluded today, May 20, 2021 – was in fact fully executed as directed in the original tentative agreement. But instead, I have learned that the definitive agreement for this sale was NOT in fact signed today, as dictated in the preliminary agreement. Now what?
I can’t say this news from Onkyo Home Entertainment comes as much of a surprise. And based on conversations I’ve had with many of you over the last week or so, my reference a couple of weeks back to the growing romance between Onkyo and Voxx was clearly a wink-nod signal that I saw this coming. Onkyo has signed a preliminary agreement to sell their largest, but not their only, remaining division – the home audio/video division – to a partnership consisting of Sharp Corp. and Voxx Intl. The deal includes the Onkyo, Integra, Pioneer, and Pioneer Elite brands.
But after the abject failure of three previous attempts to sell the troubled company, will this deal actually close? See my thoughts…
This week we learned that 11 Trading Company…part of Premium Audio Company…which itself is part of Voxx International (love those big corporate structures), has added the only remaining Onkyo brands – Teac & Esoteric – to their distribution line list. They did not include these brands in the original announcement of their agreement with Onkyo, but most people expected it to be added in time. With this new development we get a nice progression of the budding relationship between the companies – Voxx distributing Onkyo, Integra, Pioneer, Pioneer Elite, Teac & Esoteric – while Onkyo Corp. becomes the Klipsch distributor in Japan. Where could this be heading?
VOXX International Corporation (NASDAQ:VOXX) revealed this week that they were the victim of a ransomware attack in July and that an assessment of the hack completed early this month shows that sensitive and confidential employee and contractor information has been compromised. The company has issued a warning to all employees and contractors who have worked for the company over the last 20-years.
Last week, a letter was sent to all Onkyo dealers in the United States notifying them that their dealer agreements were being terminated. The reason for this termination? Onkyo USA Corporation no longer exists and therefore can no longer serve them. Don’t miss the significance of this historic moment – for the first time in 45-years there is no Onkyo subsidiary in the U.S., once the largest market for parent Onkyo Pioneer Corporation (OPC) of Osaka, Japan.
As part of an internal restructuring to accommodate their recent acquisition of the distribution rights to certain Onkyo brands, Voxx International Corporation announced this week that it has renamed the existing Klipsch Holding LLC to the rather generically named Premium Audio Company LLC. This is just the first change, as I’ve learned more announcements are just around the corner.
