Possible options may include change of control of pioneering
document-copier firm
By David Benoit, Dana Cimilluca and Dana Mattioli
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (January 11, 2018).
Xerox Corp. is in talks to potentially strike a major deal with
Japan's Fujifilm Holdings Corp. as the U.S. document pioneer
struggles to reinvent itself.
The two companies, which already have a joint venture, are
discussing an array of possible deals that may or may not include a
change of control of Xerox, according to people familiar with the
matter.
A full takeover of the Norwalk, Conn., company isn't on the
table, one of the people said. No deal appears imminent and one may
not be reached.
Should there be a change of control of Xerox, it would mark the
end of the independence of a stalwart of American industry that was
an early technological trailblazer that has been bedeviled by a
drop off in demand for office printing. A deal would give both
Fujifilm and Xerox a chance to root out costs and make their legacy
businesses more efficient, some of the people said.
Xerox shares, which topped out at more than $150 in the late
'90s, now trade at just over $30 amid a continued slump in sales
and profit. Xerox's market value stands at roughly $7.7 billion; it
also has more than $4 billion of net debt.
The talks come as Xerox faces a second fight with activist
investor Carl Icahn over its board of directors and Chief Executive
Jeff Jacobson. Mr. Icahn, Xerox's biggest shareholder with a 9.7%
stake, last month canceled a previous agreement with the company by
pulling off his board representative to campaign for more board
seats.
Mr. Icahn has warned Xerox is at risk of losing ground it staked
out with decades of research and development. He worries the
company could face a fate akin to Eastman Kodak Co., once one of
America's former corporate titans, which filed for bankruptcy in
2012 and emerged a year later after selling assets and shedding
unprofitable business lines.
Xerox was founded in 1906 in Rochester, N.Y., as the Haloid
Company, a maker of photography paper. In 1947, Haloid entered an
agreement that gave it a license to develop a xerographic machine,
the invention of patent attorney Chester Carlson. Haloid introduced
its first machine, the XeroX, in 1949, and the company officially
changed its name to Xerox in 1961 and listed on the New York Stock
Exchange.
Xerox and Fujifilm have a long history together. They struck a
joint venture 55 years ago that is known as Fuji Xerox and sells
copiers and printers in the Asia-Pacific region. Fuji Xerox is 75%
owned by Fujifilm and now has about $10 billion in annual
sales.
Xerox dominated the copier market for decades but by the 1970s
new competitors from Japan chipped away at its empire after U.S.
antitrust regulators forced it to license its patent portfolio. The
Fuji Xerox joint venture helped the U.S. company fend off Canon
Inc. and other rivals with low-end copiers, but by the end of the
'90s the rise of email and desktop printers had upended its market
and forced several painful restructurings.
Last year, the company broke itself in half, spinning its
business-services operations into a new company dubbed Conduent
Inc. The legacy company returned to its roots of making printers
and copiers, an industry facing upheaval and an uncertain
future.
Fujifilm, based in Tokyo, got its start in film and cameras and
now derives most of its revenue from document services -- copiers
-- and health care, from in-vitro diagnostic systems to
pharmaceuticals and skincare products. Its market value is about
$22 billion.
Xerox trades at a discounted price-to-earnings valuation
compared with most of its peers, and while its stock popped on the
first day of trading after splitting from Conduent, it was largely
flat the rest of 2017 while the broader market soared.
Xerox has been cutting costs to try to make the remaining
business more profitable. Meanwhile, it and rivals are hunting for
more revenue in faster-growing fields.
Xerox touts its 11,500 patents and talks about innovation
changing how companies and people communicate and share work. It is
working on buzzy topics like automation, artificial intelligence
and the Internet of Things, as physical paper becomes less and less
the chosen mode of office communication.
It has said it is ahead of its plan on refocusing its business
toward markets that are gaining, and in October it increased its
2017 profit forecast. The company typically reports fourth-quarter
results near the end of January.
JPMorgan analysts said in October that they didn't expect the
company to return to earnings growth until 2023, adding "there
remains an ever-present risk of secular decline in printing
documents." Still, JPMorgan recommended the stock for its dividend
and potential to gain after recent slumps.
--Nathan Becker contributed to this article.
Write to David Benoit at david.benoit@wsj.com, Dana Cimilluca at
dana.cimilluca@wsj.com and Dana Mattioli at
dana.mattioli@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 11, 2018 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.