Hisense Electric Co., Ltd, a publicly listed subsidiary of Hisense Group announced that agreements for a series of business including Toshiba TV Productions, brand & operation service are entered into on 14th, Nov.
In this transaction, Hisense will purchase 95% stock shares of Toshiba Visual Solutions Corporation (“TVS”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation with the price of 12.9 billion Japanese Yuan. Respectively, Toshiba holds its 5% stock rights. Hisense will obtain the TV businesses including production, research and development, and sales functions. Meanwhile, TVS will acquire a worldwide license to use the Toshiba brand in connection with its visual solutions products and services for a period of 40 years, including in connection with TVS’s existing business partners operating in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
Within its 142-year history, Toshiba has leaded the technology in display filed in Japan or even in the world, and Toshiba brand is top-ranked in Global Technology Brand List. Especially in China, the classic advertising melody “Toshiba, Toshiba, new era’s Toshiba” hit Chinese customers’ memory up to now. TVS primarily operate Toshiba TV and various ancillary products, including commercial display and, advertisement display products. TVS has two factories in Japan and hundreds of R&D employees, and has significant IP portfolio related to TV business, including patents related to TV image quality and acoustics.
Mr. Liu Hong Xin, the CEO of Hisense Group who attended the ceremony, said that Hisense will optimize TVS’s resources on R&D, supply chain or global sales channels, cooperate with and support each other in display technology, to provide competitive content operation services for smart TVs for the global market and to accomplish continuing and fast growth in Japanese market.
According to the IHS, sales of Toshiba TV ranked No.3 in Japanese market in 2016. At present, Hisense TV’s market share in Japanese Market is the highest among all the foreign brands. The market share of Toshiba brand and Hisense brand is 20% of the TV market in Japan and will target No.2 in Japanese market after the transaction. Hisense's color TV business in 2016 ranked third in the world (IHS). It has been the first in China for 13 consecutive years and continuously sponsoring the 2016 European Cup, 2018World Cup and other top sports events, to implement its global strategy. With the benefit of this acquisition, Hisense will develop and enlarge its international strategy TV business in R&D, branding and marketing by operating under multiple brands. The cooperation between Hisense and Toshiba will drive changes to the new picture of TV business.
