News

Cooper Industries Announces Acquisition of Eka Systems

April 25, 2010 by Jeff Shepard

Cooper Industries plc announced the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Germantown, Maryland -based Eka Systems, Inc., a provider of secure, reliable and adaptive RF wireless networking technologies for smart grid communication applications. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Eka Systems, through its EkaNet™ Smart Network technology, provides utilities with an open-standards based wireless Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solution that has capabilities such as automated meter reading, power outage detection, enhanced customer billing options and the ability to track and analyze usage data on a near real-time basis. Eka Systems’ product offering includes radios, wireless repeaters, meter nodes, gateways and data collection tools and operates over the widely used 900Mhz radio frequency for domestic markets and the 2.4GHz frequency for international markets.

"This is the fourth acquisition we have made into our Energy Automation Solutions (EAS) business and demonstrates Cooper’s ongoing commitment to being a market leader in utility automation," said Cooper Industries Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kirk S. Hachigian. "Eka Systems’ RF wireless networking capabilities are a perfect complement to our existing EAS platform, which has approximately $200 million in annual revenues and continues to experience double-digit growth. While the Eka Systems technology has limited existing deployments, this acquisition represents a long-term commitment to this space as we plan to make significant additional organic investments in this product line to further enhance our competitive position in the rapidly expanding utility automation market. Additionally, this acquisition creates an opportunity to increase the global presence of our EAS platform, as Eka Systems’ 2.4GHz frequency radio technology is the accepted standard for international markets."

Eka Systems will be integrated into the EAS group, the smart grid platform within Cooper’s Power Systems division. Largely due to planned additional research and development investment, the acquisition is anticipated to reduce Cooper’s 2010 forecasted Earnings Per Share by approximately $.03.

"Cooper Power Systems focuses on providing comprehensive solutions to our customers and we have leading positions in apparatus, communications technology, enterprise software and automation applications," said Cooper Power Systems President Mike Stoessl. "For AMI applications, we are the market leader for PLC based installations and with this acquisition will be able to offer our customers who require both PLC and RF technologies more customized solutions to meet their individual needs in both rural and urban service territories."

"Cooper has an exceptionally strong balance sheet and continues to maintain a focused and disciplined acquisition strategy," said Hachigian. "We remain committed to building key business and technology platforms like utility automation that provide substantial long-term growth opportunities in higher technology, more specification-driven end markets."