II‐VI Incorporated reported that it has acquired Coherent, Inc., according to a company statement, adding that the new company will form a global leader in materials, networking, and lasers.
“Coherent is an innovator with a rich portfolio of some of the most advanced technologies in the world, which have been transformative in a broad range of markets,” said Vincent D. Mattera, Jr., Chair and CEO of II-VI. “I would like to thank Andy Mattes for his leadership of Coherent and enabling a very successful integration planning process.”
The combined business will be more distributed across the value chain from materials to components, subsystems, systems and service. II-VI’s scale, at the levels of the value chain where expertise in materials matters, is complementary to Coherent’s scale where laser systems play. The combined company will leverage that complementary scale in ways that will really matter to our customers in strategic markets.
“I am also very excited to announce a new direction for our brand: We plan for the combined company to be named Coherent,” said Mattera. “We will soon announce the date of the launch of our new brand identity. While the name Coherent has a strong association with lasers, the broader meaning of the word is ‘bringing things together.’ It represents our diversity in thinking distilled into our clarity of purpose, our unity in action, and our broader sense of engagement by connection to our mission, vision and values.”
He added, “With our foundation in materials and our unstoppable imagination, we will enable the next evolution of the cloud, 3D sensing, electric vehicles, additive manufacturing, the commercialization of space, and the personalization of health care, just to name a few. We are together on a journey towards a future that will be increasingly mobile, intelligent, and electric, accelerating the pace of innovation and enabling a stream of spectacular successes that will sustainably change the world around us.”
The combined company will serve the four growing markets: industrial, communications, electronics and instrumentation, representing a total addressable market of $65 billion. The combined company’s global workforce will consist of over 28,000 associates in 130 locations worldwide.s.
Each share of Coherent common stock was converted into the right to receive $220.00 in cash and 0.91 of a share of II-VI common stock, under the terms of the merger agreement.
Management and Board of Directors
According to that statement, the Board of Directors will include seasoned executives and thought leaders from diverse industries. Stephen A. Skaggs and Sandeep S. Vij, former directors of Coherent, will also join the board.
Business Segments
The combined company will be organized into three business segments. Giovanni Barbarossa will continue to serve as the Chief Strategy Officer of the company and lead the Materials Segment, previously referred to as the Compound Semiconductors Segment. Sunny Sun will continue to lead the Networking Segment, which was previously the Photonic Solutions Segment. Mark Sobey, formerly the COO and Executive Vice President of Coherent, will be the President of our new Lasers Segment.
Advisors
Allen & Company LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are acting as II-VI’s financial advisors, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and K&L Gates LLP are serving as legal advisors to II-VI. Bank of America and Credit Suisse are serving as financial advisors to Coherent, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is serving as legal advisor to Coherent.
II VI is listed on Nasdaq as IIVI and Coherent trades on Nasdaq as COHR.
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