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Harman To Acquire B&W, Denon, Polk And Marantz From Masimo In $350 Million Deal

Even at apparent fire-sale prices, it's not obvious to me what value this new laundry-list of companies will bring to Harman, whose strongest brand seems to be JBL. Could this be the result of a decision from above, by someone who views the brands as legends which must not be allowed to become extinct?
 
JeffS7444 said:
Even at apparent fire-sale prices, it's not obvious to me what value this new laundry-list of companies will bring to Harman, whose strongest brand seems to be JBL. Could this be the result of a decision from above, by someone who views the brands as legends which must not be allowed to become extinct?
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It gives them access to certain markets they don’t have at the moment for example:

- Revel has very little foot print in Europe B&W does and also has connections with the recording industry, largely because they have speakers to studios but still.

- JBL are similar they have pro audio recognition but not home audio, and Arcam are perceived as good but bug ridden where as Denon has the brand recognition and perceived quality.

However as I previously said they are not going to spend on duplicate R&D the brands might live on but a bunch of engineering is going to go for example for existing brands owned by Samsung/Harman

- Harman / Kardon essentially only exists as brand to license for car audio.
- Lexicon doesn’t really exist and the only products are some rebadged Crown amps.
- AKG exists only as a brand selling existing product the engineers all left and started Austrian Audio.
- Soundcraft is basically dead.
 
watchnerd said:
Oh my sweet summer child...

Redundancies will be eliminated.
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well, what i mean is that some people will keep their jobs,
(at least for now) vs all will be lost.
I know all too well that with such endeavors there will always be some scale down, and yes there will jobs lost, which is sad no matter what business, again i wish them under the new "umbrella" all the best:D
 
amper42 said:
Is that worrisome for Revel, Marantz and home audio fans?
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In general no. The Harman Luxury division has been moved around a lot. For a while, it was actually under the car audio group where it got a ton of support since their technology was used in OEM infotainment systems. They were then moved out to JBL where it influenced the designs there (think JBL M2).

Now, what the new CEO thinks of these lines, I don't know.
 
Harman is focusing on car audio, headphones/earbuds and portable speakers.
If take a look at this forum, in recent years I don't remember new remarkable Harman products launched in the proper traditional hi-fi market segment. Some other brands come to my mind for objective results in electronics (wiim, topping, smsl, hypex/purifi) or speakers (kef, genelec, neumann, kali). No news from Arcam, some delusional performance from Jbl and Infinity, no recent products from Revel despite the immense r&d reputation.
Now instead of renewing the offering of the existing brands they are getting new ones with even poorer performances.
I really can't figure out why.
 
amarsicola said:
If take a look at this forum, in recent years I don't remember new remarkable Harman products launched in the proper traditional hi-fi market segment.
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At high-end Munich show, they announced both new JBL and Mark Levinson products. So there is still investments going on.
 
amarsicola said:
Harman is focusing on car audio, headphones/earbuds and portable speakers.
If take a look at this forum, in recent years I don't remember new remarkable Harman products launched in the proper traditional hi-fi market segment. Some other brands come to my mind for objective results in electronics (wiim, topping, smsl, hypex/purifi) or speakers (kef, genelec, neumann, kali). No news from Arcam, some delusional performance from Jbl and Infinity, no recent products from Revel despite the immense r&d reputation.
Now instead of renewing the offering of the existing brands they are getting new ones with even poorer performances.
I really can't figure out why.
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Buying brand, distribution channels, customer fan bases.
 
What is causing this issue with these renowned companies?

Is it the result of Atmos?
 
It is called valuation. Generally company's free cash flow discounted to the transaction date. It is result of market not expecting much in terms of performance from these companies. Not much to do with Atmos at all.
 
chelgrian said:
Saturated market, reduction in disposable income due to geopolitical nonsense and few new younger customers coming through.

Same effect that caused Leica to almost go bankrupt in 2004.
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I think it's also about what younger audiophiles spend their audio money on.

Expensive headphones and pricey headphone amps seem a higher priority for younger folks these days, for all sorts of reasons.

But that means less money on traditional speakers (if at all). And when they do buy speakers, active monitors also seem popular vs passive.
 
Better get a Marantz 30n SACD player now or wait for what Harman is cooking? A streamer with Dirac and balanced inputs and outputs with full roon support would be something :).
 
watchnerd said:
Why not buy a used SACD player?

The tech is ossified anyway
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Oh I don’t really care about the disc drive. That would be something i wouldn’t use much . But I like the design / dsd upsampling , the Marantz dac and its a roon endpoint ) .. if it only had Dirac :D
 
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