PSC Inc.

PSC Inc. is a major manufacturer of portable data terminals, mobile data terminals, wireless terminals, bar code scanners, and RFID readers. The company reports having more than 4500 customers worldwide, including top companies in the airline, food, pharmaceutical, retail, aerospace, and chemical manufacturing industries.

Background

PSC was founded in 1969 as Photographic Sciences Corporation. On June 26, 1974, Spectra-Physics (later to be owned by PSC) made history with the first UPC bar code scan. A 10 Pak of Wrigley’s chewing gum was scanned at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, using a Spectra-Physics bar code scanner. In 1996 PSC acquired Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems, Inc., and followed up in 2000 with the acquisition of Percon Inc., a leading manufacturer of partible data terminals. Some Auto ID Data Capture (AIDC) industry observer speculate that these acquisitions may have required significant sums of cash, and could be the reason for PSC's 2002 bankruptcy reorganization. Littlejohn & Co., a private equity firm, purchased all of the company's senior and subordinated debt of $124 million, with the intention of converting a significant portion of this debt into equity through a financial reorganization. An affiliate of Littlejohn provided a DIP financing facility of up to $20 million. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_Nov_22/ai_94530399 PSC Reaches Restructuring Agreement With Littlejohn & Co., LLC; Affiliates of Littlejohn Acquire all Outstanding Debt] ]

During the reorganization PSC spun off its software division, IntelliTrack, to private investors.

As of April 2 2007, PSC merged into Datalogic but its widely used models of bar code scanners sold by Datalogic include: Magellan, Duet, Falcon, PowerScan, and QuickScan.

Acquisition by Datalogic

On October 24, 2005, Datalogic announced [ [http://www.corporate.datalogic.com/_vti_g19_prArt.aspx?idA=209&rpstry=155_ News - Article - Datalogic S.P.A. (Star: Dal.Mi) Agrees To Acquire The American Company Psc Inc. And Calls The Shareholders’ Meeting To Approve A Capital Increase ] ] that it had signed a binding contract for the acquisition of the entire capital stock of PSC Inc.. The agreed price was set at approximately 195 Million USD (enterprise value) to be paid in total by December 31, 2005.

On the eve of the acquisition, Roberto Tunioli, CEO of [Datalogic] said "With this transaction Datalogic Group more than doubles its worldwide revenue and reinforces its competitive position in the retail market and in geographic areas, such as the United States, which are of utmost strategic importance."

In a joint letter to partners and customers [http://www.corporate.datalogic.com/Tools/download.aspx?lng=19&file=/upload/pressR/download/215_191_2.pdf&name=Letter_to_PSC_Customers_and_Partners_pdf.pdf] , the CEOs of Datalogic and PSC Inc., Mr. Roberto Tunioli and Mr. Jack Farrel respectively, announced that both the companies were financially healthy and there was no need to hurry to merge into and create synergies and that PSC would be an independent subsidiary and the management and sales team of PSC will remain in PSC.

On December 11, 2006, the Board of Directors of Datalogic S.p.a approved a restructuring plan and decided to reorganize Datalogic into the three strategic operating divisions [ [http://www.corporate.datalogic.com/_vti_g19_prArt.aspx?idA=565&rpstry=155_ News - Article - DATALOGIC (Star: DAL.MI): The Board of Directors approves the organizational change of the Group ] ] :

* Datalogic Scanning, headquartered in USA, comprising two business units - Hand Held Readers and Stationary Readers - Retail. This resulted in the consolidation of the two hand-held reader product lines of the Group, which were harmonized into a cohesive offering. The stationary readers for retail applications continued to be a core offering.
* Datalogic Automation, headquartered in Italy, comprising three business units - Unattended Scanning Systems - Industrial, Marking and RFID. This allowed Datalogic to leverage its field infrastructure for three businesses which shared a common market and customer focus.
* Datalogic Mobile, headquartered in Italy, comprising one business unit - Mobile Computers. This resulted in the consolidation of the two mobile-computing product lines of the Group, which were harmonized into a cohesive offering.

On February 5, 2007, Mr. Roberto Tunioli wrote a letter [http://www.corporate.datalogic.com/Tools/download.aspx?lng=19&file=/upload/pressR/download/608_247_2.pdf&name=Letter_to_Customers_written_by_Roberto_Tunioli.pdf] to the stakeholders informing them of the decision to take the second step in the transformation of the Datalogic business by merging PSC into Datalogic completely and retiring the PSC brand name on April 2, 2007.

On April 2, 2007, the transformation was complete and the PSC brand was retired, but the PSC legacy was catered to in the new corporate logo of Datalogic by adding a star representing PSC. Datalogic decided to retain the brand names of the products like Magellan, Duet, Falcon, PowerScan, and QuickScan.

External links

* [http://www.pscnet.com/ PSC Inc.]
* [http://www.datalogic.com/ Datalogic Group]

References