21st May 2008 07:00
Emblaze Ltd. ("Emblaze" or "the Group") COMPLETION OF THE ACQUISITION OF ORCA INTERACTIVE LTD BY VIACCESS S.A., a SUBSIDIARY OF France Telecom
Ra'anana, Israel, 21 May 2008 - Emblaze announces the completion of the acquisition of its subsidiary, Orca Interactive Ltd. by Viaccess S.A., a wholly owned subsidiary of France Telecom SA (the "Closing"), which has entered into an agreement to acquire Orca as part of its strategy to provide its customers with a complete range of services and integrated products for broadcast and IPTV applications. As a result of the Closing, the Group is disposing of its entire 61.97% holding in Orca.
Emblaze group has finished FY2007 with US$229 million in consolidated cash and short term investments and a balance sheet of US$694 million.
The acquisition consideration consists of an amount of US$13 million plus Orca's net cash as of the Closing. The sale will increase the net cash of Emblaze by US$12.9 million and the Group expects to record capital gain from this transaction of approximately US$4 million.
This sale of the Group's holding in Orca represents yet another stage of divestment of businesses that did not fall within the Group's growth strategy. This sale will allow the Group to further focus on its two main operating arms: Growth and Innovation. The Growth arm relates to the stable, mature and operational companies managed under the Formula group. The Innovation arm relates mainly to the investments made by the Group in in-house technology research and development of future wireless and cellular products.
Enquiries:Emblaze Hadas Gazit, Hagit Gal + 972 9 7699302/ 339 About Emblaze
Emblaze Ltd is a group of technology companies addressing both growth and innovation activities thus combining the stability of "bread and butter" mature technology enterprises with "high-risk / high-reward" investments in innovation.
Our Growth arm includes Formula Systems , which harbors the following subsidiaries: Magic Software Enterprises Ltd. develops, markets and supports composite application development and deployment platforms with a service-oriented architecture (SOA), including application integration and business process management (BPM), with existing and legacy systems; Matrix IT Ltd. (TASE: MTRX) is one of Israel's leading integration and information technology services companies, active in four principal areas: software solutions and services, software products, infrastructure solutions and hardware products, and training and assimilation.; Sapiens International Corporation N.V. is a provider of IT solutions that modernize business processes to enable insurance and other companies to quickly adapt to changes; and nextSource Inc., designs, develops and implements web-based, high quality, innovative human capital management solutions.
Our Innovation arm includes Emblaze Mobile, a designer of advanced mobile devices; EMOZE, a provider of Push Email and synchronisation technology for mobile devices; and ZONE-IP (Emblaze V CON), a provider of wireless video communications technologies and conferencing solutions for operators and enterprise markets over IP networks.
The Emblaze Group is traded on the London Stock Exchange since 1996. www.Emblaze.com
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