Himax Decides to Exercise Options to Fully Acquire Emza Visual Sense
March 29 2018 - 6:10AM
Himax Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:HIMX) (“Himax” or “Company”), a
leading supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and
other semiconductor products, today announced that it has decided
to exercise its options to fully acquire Emza Visual Sense Ltd.
(“Emza”). Terms of the investment were not disclosed. The
transaction is expected to close by the end of the second quarter,
2018.
Emza is an Israeli company dedicated to the
development of extremely efficient visual sensors that include
proprietary machine-vision algorithms and specific architectures
that enable always-on visual sensing capabilities, achieving orders
of magnitude improvement in power consumption, price and form
factor. Aiming at the booming computer vision market, Himax made a
strategic cash investment for 45.1% equity of Emza in April 2017,
with one-year options to acquire the remaining 54.9% of Emza’s
equity and all outstanding stock options. The acquisition will
allow Himax to fully leverage the synergy between the two companies
into producing visual sensors that integrate camera, hardware and
algorithms and operate at unprecedented power, cost and size. Emza
will continue as it is after the acquisition, and will maintain
Emza company brand as well as the WiseEye® brand product lines.
“With the full acquisition of Emza, Himax will
be uniquely positioned for IoT solutions, which require tight
integration of the critical skills and knowledge of Himax’s CMOS
technology and ASIC design with Emza’s computer vision algorithms.
Himax will be positioned to offer significant value to our
customers and to enter new markets beyond consumer electronics,
such as connected homes, smart buildings and security, and extend
our reach into new IoT markets with interest in other Himax
products such as our 3D sensing solutions,” said Jordan Wu, CEO of
Himax.
“Our team members are excited about becoming
part of the Himax family. The synergy between the two companies and
our mutual skills will accelerate the development of highly
integrated turn-key IoT solutions to take machine learning-based
computer vision applications to a whole new level of performance,
price and autonomy. We will continue to pursue the IoT market and
customers,” said Yoram Zylberberg, CEO of Emza.
About Emza Visual Sense
Ltd.
Emza Visual Sense develops sub-milliwatt,
trainable, low-cost, autonomous, tiny computer-vision IoT sensors
for automatic scene interpretation of the visual world around us.
The low cost, ultra low power consumption and high intelligence
make our visual sensors applicable and affordable to a wide range
of markets and applications – from accurate counting and tracking
of people in smart buildings and connected homes to people
awareness for home appliances. Emza’s visual sensors are
smaller than a coin, consume less than 1mW and reduce cost by an
order of magnitude. Our proprietary algorithms are embedded
at the edge and are specially designed for extremely thin computing
cores and a unique ultra-low power CMOS image sensor. Emza explores
the limits of what can be achieved with minimal resolution, frame
rate, processing power, memory size, power consumption and
cost.
http://www.emza-vs.com
About Himax Technologies,
Inc.
Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIMX) is a
fabless semiconductor solution provider dedicated to display
imaging processing technologies. Himax is a worldwide market leader
in display driver ICs and timing controllers used in TVs, laptops,
monitors, mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, car navigation,
virtual reality (VR) devices and many other consumer electronics
devices. Additionally, Himax designs and provides controllers for
touch sensor displays, in-cell Touch and Display Driver Integration
(TDDI) single-chip solutions, LED driver ICs, power management ICs,
scaler products for monitors and projectors, tailor-made video
processing IC solutions, silicon IPs and LCOS micro-displays for
augmented reality (AR) devices and head-up displays (HUD) for
automotive. The Company also offers digital camera solutions,
including CMOS image sensors and wafer level optics for AR devices,
3D sensing and machine vision, which are used in a wide variety of
applications such as mobile phone, tablet, laptop, TV, PC camera,
automobile, security, medical devices and Internet of Things.
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Tainan, Taiwan, Himax
currently employs around 2,150 people from three Taiwan-based
offices in Tainan, Hsinchu and Taipei and country offices in China,
Korea, Japan and the US. Himax has 3,032 patents granted and 424
patents pending approval worldwide as of December 31th, 2017. Himax
has retained its position as the leading display imaging processing
semiconductor solution provider to consumer electronics brands
worldwide.
http://www.himax.com.tw
Forward Looking Statements
Factors that could cause actual events or
results to differ materially include, but not limited to, general
business and economic conditions and the state of the semiconductor
industry; market acceptance and competitiveness of the driver and
non-driver products developed by the Company; demand for end-use
applications products; reliance on a small group of principal
customers; the uncertainty of continued success in technological
innovations; our ability to develop and protect our intellectual
property; pricing pressures including declines in average selling
prices; changes in customer order patterns; changes in estimated
full-year effective tax rate; shortages in supply of key
components; changes in environmental laws and regulations; exchange
rate fluctuations; regulatory approvals for further investments in
our subsidiaries; our ability to collect accounts receivable and
manage inventory and other risks described from time to time in the
Company's SEC filings, including those risks identified in the
section entitled "Risk Factors" in its Form 20-F for the year ended
December 31, 2017 filed with the SEC, as may be amended.
Company Contacts:
Jackie Chang, CFOHimax
Technologies, Inc.Tel: +886-2-2370-3999 Ext.22300 OrUS Tel:
+1-949-585-9838 Ext.252Fax: +886-2-2314-0877Email:
jackie_chang@himax.com.twwww.himax.com.tw
Ophelia Lin, Investor RelationsHimax
Technologies, Inc.Tel: +886-2-2370-3999 Ext.22202Fax:
+886-2-2314-0877 Email:
ophelia_lin@himax.com.tw www.himax.com.tw
Ken Liu, Investor RelationsHimax Technologies,
Inc.Tel: +886-2-2370-3999 Ext.22513Fax: +886-2-2314-0877 Email:
ken_liu@himax.com.twwww.himax.com.tw
Investor Relations - US RepresentativeGreg
Falesnik, Managing DirectorMZ North AmericaTel:
+1-212-301-7130Email: greg.falesnik@mzgroup.us
www.mzgroup.us
Himax Technologies (NASDAQ:HIMX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Himax Technologies (NASDAQ:HIMX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024