Siemens to acquire UGS

Filed in archive merger and acquisition on January 28, 2007

As I mentioned before, SCM market witnessed two major acquisitions last week, with Zebra Technologies completing its previously announced takeover of WhereNet, and German conglomerate Siemens completing a deal to buy product Lifecycle management specialist UGS. And here is the second part which is on the acquisition of UGS:

Siemens, which offers factory automation technology and a variety of systems integration services, is acquiring Plano, Texas-based UGS, which offers computer-aided design (CAD) and PLM software, in a deal valued at $3.5 billion.

UGS was spun off from EDS in 2004. The company is privately held by investors Bain Capital, Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus.

Siemens said in a statement that UGS' activities would assigned to its Automation and Drives Group (A&D), making the group "the first supplier for the manufacturing industries to provide an end-to-end software and hardware portfolio encompassing the complete lifecycle of products and production facilities."

According to SDCE, UGS says it has a global workforce of 7,300 and more than 46,000 customers in 62 countries. In fiscal 2005, the company reported revenue of just under $1.2 billion, and in the third quarter 2006 UGS reported its 13th consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. It claims 4.4 million licensed seats and 46,000 customers worldwide.

In a statement on the deal, UGS said that Siemens A&D would integrate more than 3,000 UGS software engineers into the group, bring A&D's total software engineering staff to around 7,000. The transaction is subject to the approval by the relevant authorities.

Siemens A&D is based in Nuremberg, Germany. The company has more than 70,000 employees, and in fiscal year 2006 had sales of $16.6 billion.

UGS said that the world market for PLM software and services is approximately $13 billion, with projected yearly growth rates of 7 percent to 9 percent. "From a technological point of view, the market will be influenced by the convergence of product lifecycle, manufacturing and enterprise information technologies in many segments," UGS said. "The previous islands of product development, manufacturing and service software will increasingly transform into one integrated systems business. This enables a complete-solution supplier to achieve higher growth rates, greater value added and possibilities for differentiation from competitors."