The German manufacturer of Kion Group AG forklifts agreed to buy a Maker Dematic robot for around 2.1 billion dollars to develop in the United States and type them on Amazon.com and other online retailers while They seek to automate warehouses.
Demandic, owned by the AEA Investors buyout company and the Ontario teacher’s pension plan, carried out around $ 1.8 billion last year, and the agreement is based on a business value of 3 $ 25 billion, said Kion, based in Wiesbaden, Germany, in a statement on June 21.
The evaluation “seems relatively high” compared to Kion, analyst Peter Rothencher by Baader Bank AG said in a note. “On the other hand, demotic activities and logistical systems offer considerably higher growth opportunities than the industrial truck sector.”
The CEO of Kion, Gordon Riske, now in the ninth year in charge, moves the company in the field of software guided robots which can have a higher work rate and fewer health and safety requests than the staff of the ‘Traditional warehouse. As Internet purchases laughs, the electronic commerce market has evolved to smaller and more frequent orders from a larger range of products, exerting pressure on the way the goods are sorted on the sites of storage.
Riske, during an appeal with investors and analysts, sought to appease the nerves shaken by the price paid for demaking. The supply chain automation market – where robotic weapons in several million dollars warehouses select and take orders for everything, fruit to clothes – should grow by around 10% per year until 2019 , motivated by digitization and electronic commerce, he said on the maintenance phone.
“We love the longer -term logic of the agreement and the accretion it brings, but think that it will take a while for the market to be comfortable with the price paid,” said Ben Uglow and colleagues from Morgan Stanley, in a note. “It remains to be seen whether the growth of the targeted industry can be maintained.”
The strategic advantages of the agreement make the price “absolutely just”, said Kion’s financial director Thomas Toepfer, during the telephone interview. In addition, the multiple is “entirely online” with Kion, on the basis of the 2017 estimates, and the transaction only ends at the end of 2016, he said.
The agreement combines two emblematic German brands that have emerged from large industrial companies. Kion was bought from the industrial gas manufacturer Linde AG by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Kkr & Co., then listed through a first public offer in 2013. Dematic, which has a legal basis in Luxembourg, part of Siemens AG up to a decade there are.
Kion’s largest shareholder is now Weichai Power Co., the largest heavy truck manufacturer in China, and the announcement follows the offer of Chinese Midea Group Co. to increase his participation in the German robot manufacturer Kuka AG, This caused calls to an alternative European alternative investor.
By adding Dematic’s activities in its greatest acquisition to date, Kion will offer material management solutions ranging from hand pallets to forklift trucks and automated warehouse systems. While trying to overcome Toyota Industries Corp. As the largest global manufacturer of forklift trucks, Riske bets that Dematic’s position at the market in the United States will open access to new American customers.
“We can take advantage of this position to sell more forklifts because customers are the same,” said the CEO.
A group of Kion banks has agreed to provide a 3 billion euros bridge loan, and Kion said it was planning to refinance the loan by stocks, long -term capital markets and bank debt. The transaction should end in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval.
Kion worked with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and the sale of Dematic was managed by Deutsche Bank AG and Evercore Partners Inc. The American law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson represented the investors of the AEA And the Ontario teachers’ pension plan.