Fujifilm buying Xerox’s stake in FujiXerox – marking the end of an era

FujiXerox was founded 57 years ago, as a sales organization for Xerox in the Asia-Pacific region and increasingly as development and manufacturing operation for many Xerox products. It started out as 50-50% joint venture but with Fujifilm buying half of Xerox’s stake in FujiXerox, Xerox was left as minority owner. Today almost all toner products sold by Xerox are in fact FujiXerox products. Quizzed on that point, Xerox always stated how closely aligned and coordinated development activities between both companies are. In today’s global business the split in distribution regions between Xerox and FujiXerox became more and more of an oddity. Every vendor of a certain size strives to sell global to offset ever increasing product development costs and spread other overhead. In 2018 Fujifilm proposed to take control of Xerox by merging Xerox and FujiXerox and paying out Xerox shareholders. This did not happen and gave way to some protracted dealings between the two companies.

Fujifilm acquiring Xerox stake in Fujixerox

This came to an end now. In an agreement made public on the 5th of November 2019 Fujifilm will acquire the 25% stake Xerox still holds in FujiXerox for a sum of $2.3 billion. The sum paid is remarkably similar to the $2.5 billion which would been paid to the Xerox shareholders, would the original deal have happened. As part of the deal Fujifilm will drop the litigation filed against Xerox after the original deal was cancelled. Both companies have now the opportunity to sell into the other territories and to OEM products to/from other companies.

Mergers & Acquisitions – What they can tell us about the future of print

Merger and acquisitions in inkjet

Last week IMI Europe hosted a mergers & acquisitions in inkjet forum on the day before the 2019 European digital printing conference. I have to admit that it has been a long time that I gained that much insight on trends that will shape our industry from a conference – although I am not even in danger of buying or selling a company any time soon.

Ken Stack from Proximus LLC led through the forum on drivers and market activity in mergers & acquisitions for production inkjet technology and related companies. Despite the negative assessments print is receiving sometimes, there is a healthy interest in production inkjet companies from various sectors such as public companies, private equity (PE) and increasingly private companies as well. There is no lack of funding capital either, especially in the era of zero interest rates. On the other hand, R&D in new technologies is pricey and protracted, with spending well above a hundred million US$ for a new inkjet head generation or press design. Hence even for established players acquisitions can make a lot of sense.

Xerox Baltoro – a new platform for inkjet

The model choice for SRA3 based inkjet production printers is still quite limited, especially when compared to the choice in colour toner devices. While the sales of toner-based systems in high-end SRA3 are levelling off however, inkjet can extend the market by bringing its own strengths to the table, like: highest speeds, lower consumable cost – especially for low coverage – and a simplified marking engine. Inkjet will not make toner obsolete, but it will enlarge the scope of digital cut-sheet production presses noticeably.

Baltoro

Accordingly, it should lift some eyebrows when Xerox is launching a new model with the Baltoro HF. It is not the first foray for Xerox, having launched the Brenva HD at drupa 2016. On the 17th of October 2019 the Baltoro was shown publicly in Europe for the first time after having had its launch in Rochester in June already. On the first appearance the Baltoro and Brenva look quite similar – both use the tried & tested paper transport of the iGen5. This includes a wide range of paper decks and in-line finishers, which become available for the Baltoro. The drier is a very compact NIR drier.