Bally Technologies has completed the acquisition of SHFL entertainment.
As previously announced, SHFL shareholders are receiving $23.25 per share in cash for each share of SHFL stock. The transaction is valued at approximately $1.3bn, including assumed net debt.
“We are thrilled to announce the successful completion of our acquisition of SHFL, marking the beginning of a combination of two best-in-class, highly complementary and customer-centric gaming technology companies that will be even stronger together,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, Bally Technologies’ president and CEO. “I want to personally thank everyone involved in the process which led to a successful and accelerated close.
“Bally and SHFL both have a strong culture of commitment to innovation, responsive customer service and quickly adapting to change in a fast-paced industry. As a combined company, we believe we will enhance our ability to serve our customers, accelerate innovation, improve upon our collective product portfolio and deliver meaningful long-term value to our shareholders.
“We have dedicated significant resources towards integration-planning efforts over the past several months which have reinforced our expectations around the business and financial objectives for the acquisition.
“Our integration-planning efforts have exceeded our initial expectations as demonstrated by the accelerated closing of the acquisition, day one assembly of a combined world-class executive management team and rapid identification of incremental opportunities for revenue and synergy development. We look forward to providing an update on our second quarter fiscal year 2014 earnings call in early February 2014.”
In connection with the acquisition, Bally amended and restated its existing $1.1bn credit facility and closed a new $1.1bn Term Loan B facility with an all-in yield of 4.375 per cent. Proceeds from the new Term Loan B facility and excess capacity under the existing credit facility will be used to fund the acquisition and pay related fees and expenses.
In closing on its purchase of SHFL entertainment, Bally has restructured its management with SHFL general counsel Katie Lever being the highest ranking SHFL executive at Bally. She will become general counsel upon the retirement of Mark Lerner.
As expected, SHFL CEO Gavin Isaacs is not joining Bally, the company where he had been COO before taking charge at SHFL. Other SHFl executives given top jobs include Adrian Halpenny as senior VP of Australia and Europe, Roger Snow as SVP for table games and Julia Boguslawski as VP of marketing.
Bally’s corporate officers now, after CEO Ramesh Srinivasan, are Lever, CFO Neil Davidson and senior vice presidents as follows: business development Johnn Connelly, operations and human resources Gary Kapral, Australia-Europe Adrian Halpenny, technology Bryan Kelley, customers services Sridhar Laveti, games, table game products, interactive R&D Derik Mooberry, North American sales and corporate marketing Robert Parente, Asia, India South Africa sales Srinivasan Raghavan and systems R&D and IT Sethuram Shivashankar.
