Teledyne buying Isco to boost water monitoring instrumentation

Los Angeles, CA; Lincoln, NE— Teledyne Technologies Inc. reports that it’s purchasing Isco Inc. for approximately $96 million, and plans to merge it with a wholly-owned subsidiary. Isco manufactures water quality monitoring instruments. The acquisition requires approval of Isco’s shareholders and other conditions before closing.

Teledyne will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Isco for $16 per common share in cash, which represents a 32.2% premium over the April 7 closing price. The aggregate $96-million price tag includes payments for the settlement of outstanding stock options, and amounts to approximately $80 million after taking into account Isco’s net cash on Jan. 23, 2004. Teledyne ex-pects acquiring Isco will be accretive to its earnings.

Teledyne also formed a voting-support agreement with Dr. Robert Allington, Isco’s chairman and CEO, who beneficially owns approximately 46% of Isco’s outstanding shares. Dr. Allington has agreed to vote in favor of the merger at a special meeting of Isco’s shareholders.

‘Over the past 45 years, Dr. Allington, a pioneer in the instrumentation field, has built Isco into an outstanding company with innovative products and a reputation for high quality and cus-tomer service. The combination of Isco and Teledyne’s instrumentation businesses should provide an excellent platform for future growth,’ says Robert Mehrabian, Teledyne’s chairman, president and CEO. ‘Isco’s water quality monitoring instruments, including samplers, flowmeters, and online process analyzers are highly complementary to our existing environmental instrumentation product lines. Furthermore, Isco’s liquid chromatography systems and media provide an exciting entry for Teledyne into the high growth drug discovery and biotechnology markets.’

Allington adds that, ‘We’re pleased that Isco will have a strong new owner that has demonstrated its desire to grow its instrumentation businesses. The long-term opportunities arising through our complementary operations should provide excellent growth for Isco’s business, employees and our community.’ Once the acquisition closes, Teledyne will enter into an employment agreement with Dr. Allington, who will become Teledyne’s senior VP and chief scientific officer for research and new product development.

During the last two and a half years, Teledyne has acquired four environmental instrumentation companies. The firm’s acquisition of Advanced Pollution Instrumentation Inc. and Monitor Labs Inc. expanded Teledyne’s industrial gas analysis business into the environmental air quality and gas analysis markets. The acquisitions of Tekmar-Dohrmann and Leeman Labs added laboratory in-struments for the detection and analysis of organic and inorganic compounds in drinking water and wastewater.

Overall, Teledyne provides electronic components, instruments and communication products, systems engineering solutions, aerospace engines and components and on-site gas and power generation systems.

Isco’s water quality monitoring products include wastewater samplers and open channel flowmeters. The company’s liquid chromatography customers include pharmaceutical laboratories involved in drug discovery and development. Isco also manufactures chemical separation instru-ments for industrial and research use. Online process control instruments for the wastewater market are produced by STIP-Isco for worldwide distribution.

Control Engineering Daily News DeskJim Montague, news editorjmontague@reedbusiness.com

Do you have experience and expertise with the topics mentioned in this content? You should consider contributing to our CFE Media editorial team and getting the recognition you and your company deserve. Click here to start this process.