PACE ACQUIRE DIGITAL TV COMPANY XCOM

PACE Micro Technology have acquired digital television technology company, Xcom Multimedia Communications (Xcom), for an initial consideration of £18.1 million, to be satisfied by the issue 2,635,418 Pace ordinary shares and £0.8 million in cash.
Further consideration to a maximum of £22 million may be payable in Pace shares, dependant on the gross margin performance of Xcom in the period to December 31 2002.
Malcolm Miller, Chief Executive of Pace Micro Technology, said: “Xcom fits well with Pace’s strategy of strengthening their position as the world’s largest dedicated developers of digital television gateways. They have developed a leading product for analogue switch off, and will further expand Pace’s overseas revenues. The new products and customers, benefiting from Pace’s technology portfolio, will provide immediate revenue and profit opportunities for the Group.”
Xcom, based in Grenoble, France, sells digital set-top boxes, with an international client base in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. 50 per cent of Xcom’s employees are engineers who specialise in gateway technology and bring several new products and technologies to the Pace portfolio, including an ultra low cost digital TV adapter (DVTA) aimed at analogue switch-off, and two new conditional access systems.
The DVTA developed by Xcom, delivers free-to-air or encrypted digital television services into non-pay TV homes and to secondary televisions in multi-television households. (CD)