Continuing its PV equipment company consolidation attempts, Meyer Burger will acquire Roth & Rau in a friendly takeover. Meyer Burger said it had already acquired a total of 11.3% of the share capital of Roth & Rau AG from the founders and key shareholders. Meyer Burger is offering bearer shares in Roth & Rau at €22 per share in cash, a premium of around 41 % compared with the volume-weighted average share price of the past three months. The total deal is worth approximately €356.6 million.

The acquisition fills in significant gaps in Meyer Burgers c-Si cell processing capabilities, since the company has already made several strategic acquisitions in recent years to bolster its equipment product offerings downstream into module manufacturing and certain other manufacturing equipment areas.

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The transaction, based on 2010 financial results, would mean the Swiss-based supplier would leapfrog centrotherm photovoltaics as the second-largest PV equipment supplier, with revenue of over €1 billion. According to recent rankings from market research firm VLSI Research, Meyer Burger was the fourth-largest equipment supplier, while Roth & Rau was ranked seventh. Roth & Rau posted sales of €285.3 million in 2010, up 44.2% compared to the previous year.

The companies said that on closing the merger, Roth & Rau operations would form the core of a new 'Cells' technology and competence centre within the Meyer Burger Group and would continue to be run as a proprietary technology competence centre and operating German company at its main location in Hohenstein-Ernstthal.

“With joint activities in research and development, the combination of our distribution networks and through the larger offering of fully integrated system solutions we play a crucial role in further reducing the costs along the value chain in photovoltaics,” commented Peter Pauli, CEO of Meyer Burger Technology AG. “This is just another step to sustainably reduce the costs of solar power and to help achieve the industry goal of grid parity as fast as possible.”

Dietmar Roth, CEO and founder of Roth & Rau AG, added, “We are convinced that Meyer Burger is the ideal strategic partner for a continuous dynamic development of our Group. Shareholders, our employees, suppliers and customers as well as the entire solar industry will profit from the new combined group.”