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Sound United, B&W, has entered agreement to been sold mid 2022.

warnerwh

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Note: Sound United includes: Denon®, Marantz®, Bowers and Wilkins, Polk Audio, Classé, Definitive Technology, HEOS, and Boston Acoustics®.

Didn't find this posted elsewhere:

 
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JSmith

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Interesting... doesn't seem to affect each brand negatively though, although time will tell if further consolidation is "required".

Sound United, LLC (“Sound United”), a leading innovator of premium, high-performance audio products for consumers around the world, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Masimo Corporation (Nasdaq: MASI) (“Masimo”). Masimo is a leading global medical technology company that develops, manufactures, and markets a variety of noninvasive monitoring technologies for hospital and home settings.

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warnerwh

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It sounds like everything is supposed to stay the same. However it's possible they don't want to scare stockholders.
 

amper42

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In my view, Sound United didn't offer much improvement in building/servicing better Denon/Marantz products. Their biggest accomplishment was raising prices dramatically and reducing local warranty service options. Now Denon/Marantz are sold to a medical device company? The only one doing better with this deal is Citigroup and the lawyers. Maybe there will be an optional heart monitor/EKG option with the next Marantz AVR? lol

Meanwhile, Onkyo goes bankrupt and is sold off on June 3, 2021, to Voxx/Sharp. But what does Voxx make Earbuds, little wireless speakers? Will there be any decent AVR's in a few years? :Do_O:facepalm:

 
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Newman

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It is not easy to tell unless they announce something about intentions.
 

sgent

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I just don't get it. These companies have absolutely nothing in common that I can figure out except for SU's experience selling to the consumer channel which Masimo wants to tap (they are coming out with consumer health devices). But that said, I would think there would be an easier way than buying, presumably for cash, a fairly large company like SU that has nothing to do with their core industry. Masimo is also publicly traded and down 6.5% after hours so apparently, stockholders aren't impressed.

Maybe the CEO/Founder just loves Marantz receivers and really wants Dirac...
 

Galliardist

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Who'd be a B&W employee? First that reverse takeover from a startup wanting to do, well, something audio... then sold to Sound United... now this.
I just don't get it. These companies have absolutely nothing in common that I can figure out except for SU's experience selling to the consumer channel which Masimo wants to tap (they are coming out with consumer health devices). But that said, I would think there would be an easier way than buying, presumably for cash, a fairly large company like SU that has nothing to do with their core industry. Masimo is also publicly traded and down 6.5% after hours so apparently, stockholders aren't impressed.

Maybe the CEO/Founder just loves Marantz receivers and really wants Dirac...
Masimo have a specialised semiconductor division that does chip fabrication for consumer products. So it's not impossible that they are already involved in audio in some obscure way (I believe they may have started out as a semiconductor fabrication company and then specialised in medical devices).

It could mean that Sound United companies can get their hands on specialised chip fabrication. That might get interesting down the line...

or it could just mean HEOS3 will want to spy on our health :eek:
 

Andysu

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i guess my denon avc-x8500h will soon have more practical as an anchor weight. never liked denon, marantz with software bug issues and they are so slow at video switching takes 8secs for the video/audio to get stable lock signal. i seen snails doing it a lot faster in the garden than denon/marantz behaving like some cheap pc computer.

 

Galliardist

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i guess my denon avc-x8500h will soon have more practical as an anchor weight. never liked denon, marantz with software bug issues and they are so slow at video switching takes 8secs for the video/audio to get stable lock signal. i seen snails doing it a lot faster in the garden than denon/marantz behaving like some cheap pc computer.

You never know, a medical products company might have heard of things like maintenance and proper firmware fixes... we just have to get on to the health forums and say "why should we trust you with our lives when you can't get your receivers to work?" a few dozen times, maybe call them out on Facebook as well? Products not working are a LOT more embarrassing for a medical company
 

sgent

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A little more information:

Masimo will pay approximately $1.025 billion, subject to adjustments, for the acquisition. Masimo intends to finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand and borrowings under a new credit facility, and expects the transaction to close in the middle of 2022,

And from the 4th Q Earnings Call:

[Lots of interesting things cut, including SU having 14% EBIDTA, but this seemed interesting]

Operator

Thank you very much, Mr. Kiani. [Operator Instructions] With that, we’ll take our first question this afternoon from Matt Taylor with UBS.

Matt Taylor

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. So I’d love to hear more about the opportunity here for Masimo with the acquisition. Maybe you could give us a sense for some of your vision about how you’ll integrate Masimo technology with these brands and how quickly that could evolve to take more of your hospital technology into the home.

Joe Kiani

Sure. Thank you. I’m going to give you, I think, a fraction of what we’re planning because of competitive reasons. But I think you’ll see even the fraction of what we’re discussing is going to be significant.

First of all, I want to tell you, since I was a kid, I’ve been an enthusiast of audio file equipment and the engineering that is done to create these incredible products that can not only replicate recorded music, but do it in a way without distortion with incredible fidelity. And the companies that are part of Sound United are the best of the best. And what a fantastic thing, and we’re going to hopefully do things to help them become even better, even though Denon is a 100-year brand, marantz a 50-year brand and so forth, Bowers & Wilkins and Polk an English and a U.S. company with the first two Japanese companies that have just done a remarkable job.

But they’ve got things like HEOS, which we really like in the connectivity side. We also see their incredible team and the way they develop the channels in the past 15 years, led by Kevin Duffy as a big relief maybe and an opportunity that we see for the launch of W1 and other products that are coming. We have expanded significant resources for many years to get to this place from a technological perspective. And we believe this team will help us maximize the potential for W1 and other products that are going to follow.

Secondly, maybe as I’m getting older, my hearing is getting worse, but there’s an opportunity with the Air Buds and the new regulations in the United States regarding hearing aids to really do some cool things in both listening to music and having communication to improving the hearing and experiences of many, many people. And we see that as another large opportunity that we will now better be able to serve. These are projects we’ve been working on internally. But now with Sound United, we can hopefully accelerate them and reach a broader audience more rapidly.
 

amirm

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Masimo will pay approximately $1.025 billion, subject to adjustments, for the acquisition.
Wow, would have never imagined someone paying so much for this. Wonder if the PE company that financed Sound United made money out of this.
 

Andysu

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Wow, would have never imagined someone paying so much for this. Wonder if the PE company that financed Sound United made money out of this.
maybe its all the bug software flaws that the denon marnatz have.
 

Matias

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I lost count how many times B&W or its parent company have been sold the last few years.... Now one more time.

 
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anmpr1

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Masimo manufactures pulse oximetry devices. The CEO claims he owns and admires Sound United's core brands. I wish them well, but I've seen situations where a company moves too far from their base of expertise, and things go south for the acquired brand. Also, investing in a company because you have a personal/emotional interest in the product is not always a good thing--especially for a publicly traded company where management has to be accountable to shareholders.

Below is clip art, promoting the company's product. Maybe they can integrate a Marantz remote into the pulse oximetry unit. Just a suggestion, but if it works out, I think I deserve some royalties for the idea.


masimo.jpg
 

anmpr1

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Secondly, maybe as I’m getting older, my hearing is getting worse, but there’s an opportunity with the Air Buds and the new regulations in the United States regarding hearing aids to really do some cool things in both listening to music and having communication to improving the hearing and experiences of many, many people. And we see that as another large opportunity that we will now better be able to serve. These are projects we’ve been working on internally. But now with Sound United, we can hopefully accelerate them and reach a broader audience more rapidly.

The application of audio tech to hearing is a positive, if they can make it work out--at least from a higher fidelity standpoint. I read that Bose was getting into this market, but I haven't really followed it closely.
 

voodooless

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Sounds like most of the (possible) synergy will go towards the medical side of things. I still think it's a strange combination, especially because Masimo does not seem to own any other brands outside of the medial world.
 
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