Dan Friedmann, president and chief executive officer of MDALAURA LEYSHON FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Remarks by MDA CEO Dan Friedmann:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on this call on short notice. I will be providing an overview of the transaction and describe what's next for MDA. Anil will discuss the financial structure of the Company post transaction. Then we will open the line to answer your questions.
Earlier today we announced a definite agreement to sell our Property Information Products business, which is principally located in the US and UK, to TPG Capital, a leading global private investment firm.
The net proceeds from the sale will be approximately $850 million after related taxes and expenses. The transaction provides good value to our shareholders and is expected to close early in the New Year.
The reason for this transaction is that, based on our own assessment and ongoing dialogue with our stakeholders, we determined that the Property Information business is sufficiently mature and different from the rest of our business to operate under separate ownership.
Our Property Information business was built on the strengths of our information solutions competencies. We created a unique business unit with significant value, and it is now time to crystallize an excellent return on the investments we made in this business over the past 10 years.
The process we followed was to identify the best buyers for the business based on their ability to finance, and their intent to continue to operate and grow the business. We solicited appropriate candidates with an interest in this market and those with complementary strategic assets. We short-listed the candidates, and then selected TPG.
Going forward our Products business is in good hands with TPG. They have extensive experience in this market and own complementary assets, and we already have a significant business alliance with one of those complementary businesses today. TPG is a good home for our employees to successfully execute their growth plans for this business.
Employees who work in our Richmond office developing software for the Property Information business will stay with MDA and work under a subcontract from the new owner. Our Richmond based senior MDA Products management team will also remain with MDA and be available to TPG for a transition period.
As we discussed at the quarterly call, MDA's more recent growth strategy has been balanced between Systems, Products, and creating a new business aligned with our Systems business.
As we move forward all our efforts will now be focused on leveraging our core competencies to continue growing our Systems and Geospatial business, building on the success we have already achieved, and on developing high-value new business opportunities... just as we did with the Property Information Products business. Our focus is on identifying and penetrating new, strong, sustaining revenue markets, with a particular focus on commercial opportunities.
You have already seen some clear results from this growth strategy. For example, we are growing in our traditional markets such as surveillance by offering a UAV-based surveillance service under an innovative business model, and we are getting deeper into growing commercial markets like satellite communications where we can lever our strong worldwide business competencies to produce outstanding growth quickly. We plan to enter more of these kinds of markets through a combination of strategic acquisitions and organic growth.
In summary, MDA has created a solid business and it is now time to crystallize the return for our shareholders and continue to grow and create new business with a focus on levering competencies into commercial markets.