Strategy in TECH...
Last Friday, Amazon founder and now former CEO Jeff Bezos woke up the richest man in the world. He has been the richest man in the world for quite some time now. Yet when he went to bed Friday evening, he was no longer. And the reason that’s so should serve as a warning to you and all of us in the tech biz in 2021.
Emerald Holding, Inc. (NYSE:EEX), owner of the CEDIA Expo show, reported its results for the second quarter of fiscal 2021 confirming that the company lost $46.5 million in the quarter as it continues to struggle with the impact of COVID-19. Clearly, the pandemic slammed the live event and exposition industry and even as coronavirus begins to wane, the industry is finding it difficult to return to normal.
Crestron announced on Monday that it was joining with members of the Bargetzi family to create the Fred Bargetzi Memorial Scholarship, created to honor the memory of the company’s much-beloved and long-time Chief Technology Officer Fred Bargetzi, who passed away in January of this year. The scholarship will be for select students of Bargetzi’s alma mater, the University at Buffalo, and will serve both “to empower students at the University at Buffalo to succeed in their education by removing barrier’s from their progress”…and to offer a lasting legacy of the CTO who was so meaningful to one of this industry’s greatest technology companies.
Snap One Holdings Corp (Snap One) – formerly SnapAV – has filed an S-1 registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in preparation for an initial public offering (IPO) of its stock on a public exchange. In this S-1 filing, we learn much about the company’s current position and what its plan is to grow the operation to even loftier heights.
LG Electronics Inc (LG) released preliminary results for their fiscal 2021 second quarter, and they were an eye-opener. In fact, even in the wake of their surprising decision to exit the smartphone business, the company says they booked an all-new record in the quarter.
In a rather terse announcement to investors posted today, Onkyo Home Entertainment Company, Ltd. announced that, by a majority vote of company shareholders, the sale of the company’s Home Entertainment Division to Voxx International has been approved. This vote of approval was widely anticipated and represents the last formality in the transfer of the company over to Voxx. This is the first time since 1945 that Onkyo’s parent company is no longer involved in the home entertainment business.
Well after much coverage on the VOXX/Onkyo deal by Strata-gee, in which VOXX remained strangely silent, the company finally issued a press release today in which they acknowledged that they had signed an asset purchase agreement (APA) with Onkyo for $30.8 million. The deal remains subject to approval by Onkyo shareholders in a vote scheduled to take place on June 25, 2021.
This news was likely not a surprise to Strata-gee readers. But what was a surprise is that this purchase does NOT include the Pioneer and Pioneer Elite brands.
On Wednesday, at a specially convened meeting of the Board of Directors for Onkyo Home Entertainment Co. Ltd. (Onkyo), company directors formally voted to authorize the transfer of Onkyo’s home AV division to the partnership of VOXX, Intl. and Sharp Corporation, in a deal valued at $30.3 million. The transaction is pending shareholder approval. This development represents real progress on a deal that had appeared to be bogged down recently.
Sony Group announced yesterday that it will invest no less than ¥2 trillion ($18 billion) over the next three years to turbo-charge the company’s transition from a consumer electronics powerhouse to a global leader in gaming, media, and services. The only hardware they are looking to equally dominate is the sensor business – and a potential entry into the general chip-making business (more on this later).
I recently told you that the Onkyo & VOXX/Sharp deal has been delayed from a firm May 20th date to sign a definitive agreement, to a more hazy “sometime” in late May, according to an announcement released by Onkyo to investors in Japan. At the same time the company put that announcement out, they also released the final numbers for their fiscal 2021 results – the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021. The only way I can characterize these numbers is to say that they are…in a word…stunning.
