Audiovox Buys Premium Audio Company Klipsch for $166 Million - The UpStream

Audiovox Buys Premium Audio Company Klipsch for $166 Million

posted Saturday Feb 12, 2011 by Nicholas DiMeo

Audiovox Buys Premium Audio Company Klipsch for $166 Million

With the Digital Music Forum East coming up in just a few days, it's time for some news to shift towards the audio industry. We usually expect big names to show up to the event and this year CEA's President Gary Shapiro is also expected to make an appearance, complete with a fire-side chat about his latest book, The Comeback. It's also the time of year where we see big things happening with some of the major players in the field.

Well, after rumors at International CES about a possible acquisition, audio hardware manufacturer Audiovox wanted to get into the mix and bring themselves back to life as a serious name in the music world as they announced this week that they were going to officially buy out high-end speaker company Klipsch for $166 million, as well as brands Jamo, Mirage, Energy and Athena. Klipsch will end up being a subsidiary of Audiovox.

For more on what this means, click the break.

Audiovox released this statement.

Audiovox Corporation announced today that it has recently signed a non-binding term sheet to purchase all of the shares of Klipsch Group Inc. and its worldwide subsidiaries ("Klipsch"). Klipsch is a leading, global provider of premium, high performance speakers sold through retail and installation channels. The transaction is subject to a number of contingencies, including satisfactory completion of due diligence, negotiation and signing of definitive agreements and requisite approvals... The company markets products under the Audiovox, RCA, Jensen, Acoustic Research, Energizer, Advent, Code Alarm, TERK, Prestige and SURFACE brands.

Audiovox has always been known to make decent quality products with brand names like RCA under them, but an acquisition like Klipsch puts them into a whole new market. Klipsch is known for premium, high-end components that can go up against your favorite overpriced Bose system and win any day.

Chairman and CEO Fred Klipsch thinks this move will help his brand.

We are highly confident that this acquisition will result in both near and long term value growth for our shareholders and enhance our position in the premium audio category for years to come... Our team looks forward to partnering with Audiovox and with the additional resources Audiovox has to offer accelerating our domestic and global growth.

Klipsch remains focused on providing our customers with the best speaker solutions in the industry, maintaining our deep customer and supplier relationships and leveraging our world class employee base. Klipsch Group will continue to be 'The' innovative premium speaker provider our partners expect and trust.

Klipsch needed more overall exposure and Audiovox desperately needs some help with actually selling products people want to buy. This could be a perfect match for both companies and I hope to see something good come out of this deal after the cool products we saw from Klipsch at CES.

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