For $19 million, American Industrial Partners is acquiring Presstek Inc., which has reeled off beleaguered results since relocating its headquarters from Hudson, N.H., to Greenwich five years ago.
Presstek sells offset printing presses and accessories, losing $750,000 in the second quarter on $29.7 million in revenue, with sales off 5 percent from the same stretch in 2011. Since 2007, the company has cut the size of its workforce by 325 positions, giving it 385 employees entering this year.
Long focusing on small commercial printers, the company has pegged its future on its latest 75DI offset printer, which takes just six minutes to ready print runs that can hit 96,000 sheets of paper an hour. The printer could make Presstek a far more viable option for larger corporations that regularly crank out large jobs for marketing materials and other publications, as well as packaging materials.
Based in New York City, American Industrial Partners”™ advisory board includes Maurice Holmes, a former senior technology executive with Norwalk-based Xerox Corp., which hired away former Presstek CEO Jeff Jacobson early this year to run its graphics communications division.
Concurrently with Jacobson”™s departure, former CFO Jeff Cook also resigned to become CFO of Schweitzer-Mauduit International Inc., an Alpharetta, Ga.-based maker of cigarette paper and cigar wrappers, among other products.
As Jacobson”™s replacement, Presstek”™s board appointed Stanley Freimuth, a company director who was a longtime executive with Fujifilm”™s U.S. operations. Freimuth addressed the dual departures in an interview earlier this year with the printing industry trade publication WhatTheyThink.
“It was absolutely coincidental and unrelated, for both Jeff Jacobson and Jeff Cook,” Freimuth told the publication. “Jacobson was not looking for another position, but the opportunity came up quickly. Unfortunately, when you lose a CEO and CFO, it can give the wrong impression and it is wrong to assume there was some master plan behind it. It was not a planned exodus.”
Based on Presstek”™s Nasdaq performance alone, no one could have blamed the company”™s board for pulling the ripcord on the Jacobson era. During his tenure, Presstek”™s stock (PRST) went into a prolonged slump, from above $7 a share in 2007 to the $0.50 American Industrial Partners is paying for the company. In April, the company”™s board authorized a stock split with a goal of maintaining its Nasdaq listing if need be.
Instead, the company chose to be taken private by American Industrial Partners, whose private equity investment portfolio includes Mark Andy Inc., a Chesterfield, Mo.-based maker of print systems for labels and other “narrow web” printing equipment, in the industry parlance.
Founded in 1987, Presstek through 2004 was a technology provider to other print giants such as Xerox, Ryobi, Heidelberg and Eastman Kodak, with those companies using Presstek systems to accept digital files on their own printers. Jacobson and Presstek”™s preceding two CEOs were all Kodak executives.
For a combined $56 million in 2004, Presstek acquired ABDick and Precision Lithograining, giving it the capability of going head-to-head with the industry giants with its own printers and chemical-free plates.
The industry congregated early this summer at the quadrennial Drupa trade show in Germany, including Jacobson in his early tenure with Xerox.
“The actual sales coming out of Drupa of 75DIs have actually been slower than we had hoped, but I still feel very strongly that we do have some tremendous prospects in the pipeline,” Freimuth said, in an August conference call. “We are actively pursuing a number of leads that we believe will close during the balance of this year ”¦ As we announce every new sale, it kind of brings new people into the game who start thinking, ”˜Well I guess if it works for that printer I should be taking a look at this technology and see if it will work for me too.”™
