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D&M Holdings Sells Off 2nd Pro Brand, Eyes Sale Of OEM Car Audio

Mahwah, N.J. – D&M Holdings sold off its Calrec pro audio business as part of its effort to “put more of our resources and organizational focus on building our core consumer business,” said D&M Holdings CEO Jim Caudill.

The company, which does business as D+M Group, sold its Allen & Heath pro-audio business last June. Both Allen & Heath and Calrec were sold to London-based Electra Private Equity.

D&M is also evaluating its options for its automotive OEM business, which mainly builds car speakers for most large automakers but also builds car amplifiers for automakers, Caudill said. “We are evaluating our options,” he said, calling the automotive OEM business “non-core to the consumer platform.”

D&M’s focus “will be on consumer” through its Denon, Marantz and Boston Acoustics consumer audio brands, he said.

The changes are taking place because, when a new management team took over two years ago, it found a portfolio of multiple businesses without much synergy in technology, brands or distribution, Caudill explained “All were good businesses in their own right but with little synergy.”

The Denon- and Marantz-branded pro-audio businesses, which are “relatively small,” have also been identified as non-core, and D&M will look at its strategic options for those businesses, he said. Selling them, however, would be more complicated than selling the Calrec and Allen & Heath brands because they share brand names with their consumer counterparts, he noted.

The sales, marketing and engineering organizations for the Denon and Marantz pro brands are mostly independent of their consumer-brand counterparts but share some back-office functions, Caudill noted.

Privately held D&M has no plans to sell its OEM consumer-platform business, which is a lot smaller than its automotive OEM business, Caudill said. That business manufactures soundbars, streaming-media players and speaker docks for other CE brands, he said.

D&M plans no more rationalizations in its consumer business, he said, although the company “is constantly looking at it.”

 D&M sold U.K.-based Calrec for 14 million pounds ($23.1 million at the current conversion rate). D&M sold Allen & Heath for 43 million pounds in equity and debt.

 Established in 1964, Calrec designs and manufactures audio mixing consoles for the television and radio broadcast industries. The products are used primarily for sports broadcasts and other live events.

Founded in 1969, Allen & Heath designs and manufactures audio mixing consoles for live sound, such as concerts, theatres and houses of worship.

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