Filed under: Electrical Equipment, Electronic Equipment & Instruments, Office Electronics
In Oct-96 Onex Corporation and affiliates acquired all of the outstanding shares of IBM’s canadian electronics manufacturing subsidiary Celestica International Inc. (‘Celestica’) for C$750m (US$540m). This implied the following multiples for the year ended 31-Dec-96: 27% of revenue (US$2,017m), 7.6x EBITA (US$70.6m, 3.5% margin). The acquisition was financed with US$325m in debt and US$200m in equity from Onex Corporation and affiliates.
Celestica went on an acquisition rampage in the following years buying manufacturing operations from – among others – Hewlett-Packard Company, Lucent Technologies Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc, Fujitsu-ICL Systems Inc., the assets of the Enterprise Systems Group and the Microelectronics Division of IBM, Bull Electronics Inc., and NEC Corporation., Motorola Inc., Avaya Inc., and Corvis Corporation.
In aggregate Celestica spent approximately US$3,716m on acquisitions and asset purchases between Oct-96 and Dec-03. This was financed by a total of US$2,886m from share issues and approximately US$2,016m in cash provided by operations (leaving US$1,029bn in cash on the balance sheet on 31-Dec-03).
