Hisense Electric Co., Ltd, a publicly listed subsidiary of Hisense Group announced the agreement to acquire Toshiba TV Productions for a total of $113 Million (12.9 Billion Japanese Yen). In this transaction, Hisense will purchase 95% stock shares of Toshiba Visual Solutions Corporation (“TVS”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, with Toshiba holding on to its 5% stock rights.
Hisense will acquire the TV business including production, research and development, and sales functions. Meanwhile, TVS will acquire a worldwide license to use the Toshiba brand in connection with its visual solutions products and services for a period of 40 years, including in connection with TVS’s existing business partners operating in Europe, SE Asia and elsewhere.
Liu Hongxin, the president of Hisense Group who attended the ceremony, stated that Hisense will optimize TVS’s resources on R&D, supply chain or global sales channels. Both companies will also cooperate and support each other in display technology, to provide competitive content operation services for smart TVs for the global market and to maintain its fast growth in the Japanese market.
With the benefit of this acquisition, Hisense will further develop and grow its international strategy for the TV business in R&D, branding and marketing by operating under multiple brands whereby the cooperation between Hisense and Toshiba will drive positive change to the TV business.
Within its 142-year history, Toshiba led the technology in the display field both in Japan and worldwide with the Toshiba brand being top-ranked in the Global Technology Brand List. TVS primarily operate Toshiba TV and various ancillary products, including commercial display and, advertisement display products. TVS has two factories in Japan and hundreds of R&D employees, and has a significant IP portfolio related to TV business, including patents related to TV image quality and acoustics.
According to the IHS, sales of Toshiba TV ranked No.3 in the Japanese market in 2016. At present, Hisense TV’s market share in the Japanese Market is the highest among all the foreign brands. The market share of Toshiba brand and Hisense brand is 20% of the TV market in Japan and will target No.2 in Japanese market after the transaction. Hisense TV business in 2016 ranked third in the world (IHS). It has been the first in China for 13 consecutive years and continuously sponsoring the 2016 European Cup, 2018 World Cup and other top sports events, to implement its global strategy.
