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Amphenol Corp. said it has agreed to acquire the Advanced Sensors business unit of General Electric Corp. for $318 million in continuation of its efforts to add proprietary and high-margin products to its portfolio.
This transaction adds a line of products in automotive, medical, industrial and transportation to Amphenol’s already extensive offerings. The company in a statement said Advanced Sensors is a developer of highly-engineered sensors and sensor-based instruments, which it sells to companies globally. It has facilities in Asia, Europe and North America.
“We are extremely pleased by the prospect of adding Advanced Sensors to the Amphenol family upon receipt of necessary regulatory approvals. We believe that AS’ sensor and sensor-based product offerings are uniquely complementary to our core interconnect offering, and represent a significant long-term expansion opportunity driven by the increased use of both technologies in supporting electronics functionality across a broad set of applications and markets,” said R. Adam Norwitt, Amphenol’s president and CEO. “We look forward in particular to the potential to deliver additional value-added solutions to our customers across a wide array of end markets.”
Amphenol has been making strategic acquisitions to bolster its offerings, enter new markets and reduce the pressure the entire industry is facing from low-margin and price sensitive commodity products. In October, for instance, Amphenol agreed to acquire U.K. and Estonia-based Ionix Aerospace Systems to gain its “harsh-environment interconnect assemblies for the commercial aerospace market,” according to Norwitt.
The Advanced System acquisition furthers the company’s goal and should help boost earnings in future, Norwitt noted. “Consistent with our acquisition strategy and assuming a continuation of current economic conditions, we expect the AS acquisition to be accretive to earnings per share in the first year post acquisition,” he added.
