VANCOUVER – Icron Technologies Corp. (TSXV:IT) says it will be acquired by a buyer group led by a number of senior company officials for $11.8 million in a deal that will take the wireless hardware maker private.
Pender Financial Group Corp. and the other buyers will offer 53 cents per share, which it says is a 49 per cent premium to Icron’s closing share price of 35.5 cents per share Tuesday on the TSX Venture Exchange.
The buyers include a number of current Icron executives and directors, including the president and CEO.
They already hold about 7.28 million shares in Icron, or 32.8 per cent of its total outstanding shares. The deal is conditional on the approval of the majority Icron’s shareholders, excluding the buyer group.
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It plans to hold a special meeting to vote on the deal in August and is expected to close at the end of that month, at which time it will be delisted from the venture exchange.
“Icron has not been successful as a public company for a long time,” said Kelly Edmison, chairman of Icron’s board and one of the potential buyers.
“Although it is a stable small cap company and continues to grow, it is not the type of story that the resource-oriented Canadian junior markets want to hear,” Edmison said.
“We remain supportive of Icron and its business model, but the costs of remaining public, the lack of need for further financing, and the inability to provide liquidity, led us to the conclusion that it was better for Icron to continue on a private company.”
Just before the announcement, Icron announced it swung to a profit of $468,780 in the first quarter of 2011, compared to a loss of $238,185 in the same period of 2010.
It also said it earned record first-quarter revenues of $3.4 million, 47 per cent higher than a year ago.
Icron develops and manufactures high-performance video and USB extension solutions for commercial and industrial markets worldwide.
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