The acquisition of Cooper Lighting Solutions by Signify is confirmed citing a recent letter that former has distributed to its customers, partners, and other interested parties regarding the same. However, Cooper will continue to operate as a standalone business with no impact on or change for customers even after the Signify acquisition. The Cooper story is a long one for the SSL sector as the company was certainly among the earliest of movers in LED technology.
This is the second acquisition of Cooper Lighting, which was earlier acquired by Conglomerate Eaton back in 2012 as a part of the acquisition of Cooper Industries. In 2015, Eaton proactively drove a name change for Cooper Lighting to Eaton Lighting.
It was in the 2nd half of the 2019 that Eaton had announced about spinning out the lighting business as a publicly-traded company with the name of that organisation yet to be determined. Later in October 2019, Signify announced, without prior speculation by anyone, that it would acquire the Eaton Lighting business and will revert to the Cooper name.
Beginning March 2020, the business will be officially named Cooper Lighting Solutions. However, both Signify and Cooper Lighting will maintain separate front offices: sales forces, agent networks, product and brand portfolios, marketing and product development teams. Both businesses will be able to strengthen their respective product portfolios, benefitting from an increased power of innovation as well as more competitive and cost-efficient offerings.
This is expected to generate substantial cost synergies of more than $60 million per year, largely to be achieved in the first three years. These tangible and well-identified cost synergies will stem from savings in the bill of materials as well as from supply chain and sourcing optimisation. This acquisition will led Signify to generate over 50% of its sales in the Professional Lighting segment and increase the proportion of sales generated in the Americas increases from 28% to 40%.
