Schneider Electric announced on Monday that it has finalized the sale of its Pelco business unit to U.S.-based private equity firm Transom Capital Group. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Rumors of a potential sale initially surfaced in late March following a report by Reuters which revealed that Schneider had entered into exclusive negotiations with Transom regarding the sale of the surveillance industry stalwart.
Transom’s investment portfolio includes companies in variety of industries, ranging from music merchandising and licensing, to audio systems and helmets.
Schneider, a leader in the building automation space, originally acquired Pelco in 2007 with the hopes of gaining a strong footing in the video surveillance market. However, according to Jim McHale, Director of market research firm Memoori, said that deal didn’t exactly pan out as they had planned.
“Unfortunately for Schneider, the deal was never a success. While Pelco was a profitable company, it did not have the IP network camera technology which subsequently went on to dominate the market over the succeeding 10 years. IP networked products now have the largest share of the video camera market and are continuing to grow,” McHale told SecurityInfoWatch when news of potential sale first surfaced.
McHale pointed out that back in 2008, IP network camera technology was still emerging, and many skeptics doubted it would overtake analog.
“If Schneider had taken a serious look at Axis Communications, a leader in IP Network Cameras back then, they could certainly have acquired it for less than $1.2 billion. Now roll forward to 2015; Axis was acquired by Canon for $2.8 billion and today would probably not sell for less than $4 billion,” McHale added.
