Emblaze Ltd. (LSE:BLZ)
("Emblaze" or "the Group")
COMPLETION OF THE ACQUISITION OF ORCA INTERACTIVE LTD
BY
VIACCESS S.A., a SUBSIDIARY OF France Telecom
Ra'anana, Israel, 21 May 2008 - Emblaze announces the completion of the
acquisition of its subsidiary, Orca Interactive Ltd. (LSE: ORCA) by
Viaccess S.A., a wholly owned subsidiary of France Telecom SA (the "Closing"),
which has entered into an agreement to acquire Orca as part of its strategy to
provide its customers with a complete range of services and integrated products
for broadcast and IPTV applications. As a result of the Closing, the Group is
disposing of its entire 61.97% holding in Orca.
Emblaze group has finished FY2007 with US$229 million in consolidated cash and
short term investments and a balance sheet of US$694 million.
The acquisition consideration consists of an amount of US$13 million plus
Orca's net cash as of the Closing. The sale will increase the net cash of
Emblaze by US$12.9 million and the Group expects to record capital gain from
this transaction of approximately US$4 million.
This sale of the Group's holding in Orca represents yet another stage of
divestment of businesses that did not fall within the Group's growth strategy.
This sale will allow the Group to further focus on its two main operating arms:
Growth and Innovation. The Growth arm relates to the stable, mature and
operational companies managed under the Formula group. The Innovation arm
relates mainly to the investments made by the Group in in-house technology
research and development of future wireless and cellular products.
Enquiries:
Emblaze
Hadas Gazit, Hagit Gal + 972 9 7699302/ 339
About Emblaze
Emblaze Ltd is a group of technology companies addressing both growth and
innovation activities thus combining the stability of "bread and butter" mature
technology enterprises with "high-risk / high-reward" investments in
innovation.
Our Growth arm includes Formula Systems (NASDAQ: FORTY and TASE: FORT), which
harbors the following subsidiaries: Magic Software Enterprises Ltd. (NASDAQ &
TASE: MGIC) develops, markets and supports composite application development
and deployment platforms with a service-oriented architecture (SOA), including
application integration and business process management (BPM), with existing
and legacy systems; Matrix IT Ltd. (TASE: MTRX) is one of Israel's leading
integration and information technology services companies, active in four
principal areas: software solutions and services, software products,
infrastructure solutions and hardware products, and training and assimilation.;
Sapiens International Corporation N.V. (NASDAQ & TASE: SPNS) is a provider of
IT solutions that modernize business processes to enable insurance and other
companies to quickly adapt to changes; and nextSource Inc., designs, develops
and implements web-based, high quality, innovative human capital management
solutions.
Our Innovation arm includes Emblaze Mobile, a designer of advanced mobile
devices; EMOZE, a provider of Push Email and synchronisation technology for
mobile devices; and ZONE-IP (LSE: ZIP) (Emblaze V CON), a provider of wireless
video communications technologies and conferencing solutions for operators and
enterprise markets over IP networks.
The Emblaze Group is traded on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: BLZ) since 1996.
www.Emblaze.com
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