LOUD Technologies Inc. announced the divestiture, as of December 10,2003, of Mackie Designs (Italy) S.p.A. (formerly Radio Cine Forniture(RCF) S.p.A.) for a nominal amount. The divestiture occurred bymeans of the sale of all shares of Mackie Italy by Mackie Designs(Netherlands) B.V. The divestiture, which included the sale of theformer RCF factory and administrative office in Reggio Emilia, the RCFbrand name and all Italian-based assets, also results in the immediateremoval of more than $23 million (U.S.) in related bank debt fromLOUD’s consolidated financial statements.
“This is the next step in the modernization and streamliningof our worldwide manufacturing and product developmentresources,” commented LOUD Technologies’ CEO Jamie Engen.“In the last year, we’ve established a network of worldwidemanufacturing resources and have added significantly to our productdevelopment and engineering teams for both the Mackie and EAW brands.This sale will allow us to better leverage these resources,unencumbered, to bring the most innovative products to market in atimely manner.”
LOUD will continue selling products to the Italian market through anindependent distributor, and is planning to address the worldwidecommercial sound market with a new line of products under the EAWbrand. Ken Berger, senior VP of marketing and product development atLOUD Technologies, commented, “Over the last year, we’vebeen focused on developing a coherent brand strategy for all of ourproducts and markets. The strength of EAW in the engineered systemsmarket makes it the natural brand under which to consolidate all of ourcommercial audio products.”
The first products from the new EAW commercial systems group will beunveiled in early 2004. During the transition to EAW Commercial, LOUDwill continue to provide its worldwide network of dealers, distributorsand system designers with key commercial audio products.
For more information, visit www.loudtechinc.com.
