In a legal transition effective 1 January 2002, SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES AG will take over all shares of Optical Measuring -equipment & Projects (OMP), Best, The Netherlands. 50 percent of the take-over price of about EUR 22 million will be rendered in cash, the other 50 percent in new stocks from authorized capital (about one percent of the previous share capital).
Mastering is the technological conversion of digital music, data and video information into pits. The result is the so-called glass master, from which metal stampers are made in a galvanic forming process. These stampers in turn are needed for impressing the pit structure into plastic discs during injection moulding, the first step in replication: the individual digital target.
With the acquisition of OMP, SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES combines the previous business field of replication systems for optical discs with the very important preceding Mastering work step. The completion of the entire value-added chain will thus offer a significant strategic competitive advantage for all current and future disc formats.
OMP started to develop its own mastering systems in 1994 and now brings sophisticated and technologically leading process- and systems engineering to the SINGULUS Group. Prior to this, the OMP management worked at the PHILIPS Research Laboratories in Eindhoven and hence is familiar with the optical media technologies. For BY 2001, some 40 employees are generating revenues of about EUR 15 million. The after-tax-profit margin lies in the double-digit area.
In future, OMP will operate as an affiliated company of SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES AG under the name of SINGULUS OMP and its former management, headed by Mr. Kees van Nimwegen. The integration into the worldwide marketing-, sales- and customer-support organization of SINGULUS will make more growth and bigger market shares possible in both the short and the long run.
SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES AG, Hanauer Landstrasse 103, D-63796 Kahl/MainISIN: DE0007238909 / WKN: 723890