01 Aug 19. Defense Daily reported that Mercury Systems [MRCY] on Tuesday said it has agreed to acquire American Panel Corporation (APC) for $100 m in cash, adding the development and manufacture of military and commercial aerospace display systems to its C4I business. Mercury said the deal is expected to close in the current quarter. Georgia-based APC had $36m in sales for the one-year period that ended in June. APC makes tactical displays for military aircraft, land systems, maritime systems and commercial aerospace. The company’s products are installed on F-35, F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 fighter jets, the Army’s AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, M1A2 Abrams battle tank, Stryker wheeled vehicle and Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Mercury announced the pending purchase of APC in conjunction with the release of its fourth quarter fiscal 2019 financial results. The company said its focus on acquisitions is to build “capabilities and scale in the C4I market.”
Mark Aslett, Mercury’s president and CEO, said on the company’s earnings call that the APC “will add a scalable display platform to our C4I business.” He said that APC will complement previous acquisitions that were focused on avionics processing.
“Acquiring APC adds unique capabilities to our growing avionics platform and positions us to play a larger role in military digital convergence,” Aslett said. He also said the acquisition will allow the company to “compete for large avionics opportunities.”
Mercury reported fourth quarter sales of $177m, up 16 percent from a year ago, driven mainly by acquisitions. Organic growth was 3 percent. Net income increased 27 percent to $12.8m, 25 cents earnings per share (EPS).
For its fiscal year 2019, sales increased 33 percent to $654.7m. Organic revenue rose 12 percent. Net income increased 14 percent to $46.8m (96 cents EPS). (Source: Defense Daily)
BATTLESPACE Comment: The Editor has worked with American Panel for two years developing new opportunities for the company. This is a smart move by Mercury as it comes at a time when new long-range targeting systems and thermal cores require better definition 10 Bit displays, as supplied by American Panel, to give better target definition. American panel has a long standing 25 year R&D agreement with LG in Korea. In addition to the military business American Panel supplies civil displays to a number of key advertising companies such as JC Decaux and Tesco. It recently won the contract to supply all the display for TFL on Oxford Street, London.
American Panel is exhibiting at DSEI 2019.