Latest News
December 2008
Acquisition
Brulines Group plc (AIM:BRU), the market leading provider of real time monitoring systems and data management services for the UK leisure sector, is pleased to announce that it has completed the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of Vianet Limited (“Vianet”) from the administrators of Vianet plc for an undisclosed fee.
Based in Dunfermline, Scotland, Vianet provides market leading telemetry and data capture solutions to the vending industry, as well as providing market leading M2M telemetry solutions in a growing market place. Vianet reported a loss of £1,439,000 for the year ended 31 December 2007 on a turnover of £1,058,000 and at that date had gross assets of £980,000.
The Directors believe that the proposed acquisition is a compelling strategic fit with the Group for the following reasons:
· Brulines has been pursuing an increased presence in the vending marketplace, especially since its acquisition of Coin metrics, as it is a market that fits very well with the core competencies of the Group. This acquisition gives Brulines a significant and immediate presence in this growing market place without the need for Brulines to expend management time and resources developing a product offering.
· Brulines can provide key data management know how and resources in terms of sales, marketing and operations to help drive Vianet’s market penetration
· There are significant technical, communication, organisational and customer synergies.
The Directors believe that the combination of the two businesses should provide considerable cost savings which, when coupled with the opportunity to exploit pan European market opportunities, should enable the acquisition to become earnings enhancing during the year to March 2010. Furthermore, the Directors believe that that there are significant synergies to be achieved in the enlarged business across a number of technical areas including devices, applications and connectivity.
Commenting on the proposed acquisition, James Dickson, Chief Executive of Brulines Group plc, said:
“The acquisition of Vianet is a natural extension of Brulines’ core capabilities into a growing adjacent remote data capture and management market where there is an opportunity to establish market leading products and services. Brulines has an efficient and scaleable data handling capability.
“Vianet will immediately provide the Group with a pan-European customer opportunity which we will further consolidate as we also work towards expanding Brulines’ existing activities into Europe as well.
“We will continue to pursue organic development of our core business whilst leveraging our key competencies and broadening our offering through strategic acquisitions in remote data capture and data management for the leisure, vending and petrol forecourt sectors.
“Whilst maintaining our investment in the core leisure market the Group has the opportunity to establish market leading data handling positions in the vending and petrol forecourt sectors where we have identified considerable technology, operational and commercial overlap.”
