Replay TV, Rio Are Acquired By D&M Holdings

By Joseph Palenchar On Apr 21 2003 - 6:00am

D&M Holdings continued to pursue its acquisition strategy with a successful bid in a bankruptcy court for SONICblue's Replay TV and Rio business units, based here.

Asset transfers will be completed by the end of the month.

The combined purchase price for both units was $36.2 million, about the same amount specified in a non-binding agreement that the two companies failed to make definitive. The tentative agreement specified a purchase price of $40 million, minus up to $5 million of assumed liabilities.

Tokyo-based D&M already owns specialty A/V suppliers Marantz and Denon and recently announced a definitive agreement to buy specialty supplier McIntosh.

With the Replay TV and Rio acquisitions, D&M president/CEO Tatsuo Kabumoto said D&M will "leverage the technology to enhance our existing products" and "grow and extend our customer base by adding the ReplayTV and Rio lines to our product portfolio." Replay markets PVRs, and Rio markets digital audio portables and an MP3-CD microsystem.

Details of D&M's plans weren't available at press time, nor were the company's plans to handle the TV networks' lawsuit over the Replay PVR's ability to send time-shifted programs over the Internet.

On April 14, the bankruptcy court approved Opta Systems' bid for SONICblue's GoVideo business unit, which markets dual-deck VCRs, integrated DVD-VCR players, and home-theater-in-a-box systems. The bid was for about $12.5 million. Opta is a subsidiary of investment company Carmco, and Opta's vice chairman, Roger Hackett, was SONICblue's former VP of worldwide sales. Carmco works with companies to expand their sales in consumer product markets.