TELES AG Informationstechnologien — M&A Activity 2001

Aug 24, 2001

News Details

Ad-hoc | 24 August 2001 07:56

Teles AG english

Ad-hoc-announcement processed and transmitted by DGAP. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. ——————————————————————————– TELES Sells GRAVIS AG Berlin, 24th August, 2001 The Management Board of TELES AG, a company listed at the “Neuer Markt” stock exchange, has decided to sell – within its process of refocusing the TELES group on its innovative high-margin value-added Internet services WebHosting, WebLearning, and WebHighspeedAccess – the APPLE- retailer GRAVIS AG by means of an MBO. The immediate reason for the sale of GRAVIS is the intention of its management, consisting of the founders of the company, to position itself as a competent marketer of APPLE-products in the European markets in the future. In order to create the indispensable prerequisites for this expansion, it has bought back all GRAVIS shares from TELES. By means of the end 1999 GRAVIS acquisition, the TELES group purchased substantial sales potentials for its new value-added Internet services to the German APPLE market. This marketing cooperation is not affected by the MBO and remains contractually guaranteed until end 2004. The MBO is of little impact on the expected TELES group results for 2001: According to US-GAAP, its implication on the P&L statement results only in the removal from it of the – anyway low margin – GRAVIS revenues, amounting to about Euro 50M, and in including the proceeds from it in the gain/loss line for “discontinued operations”. No write offs for the group are required. Its already excellent liquidity is further increased. Yet the main advantages of this sale are to be seen primarily in the improvement of the focus of the TELES management on its new high-earnings business areas, but also in the fundamental improvement of its liquidity due to the dramatic reduction of cost of material on stock as well as in the substantial reduction of corresponding risks. The effectiveness of the sales decision is subject to Supervisory Board confirmation and short term financial implementability. Prof. Sigram Schindler, CEO end of ad-hoc-announcement (c)DGAP 24.08.2001 ——————————————————————————– WKN: 745490; Index: Listed: Neuer Markt in Frankfurt; Freiverkehr in Berlin, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hannover, München, Stuttgart 240756 Aug 01