![]() Much has been written about Staples’ previous bid for Office Depot. This is not first attempt to combine Staples and Office Depot. Office Depot, on the other hand, is a publicly listed company. The acquisition of Staples valued the company at $6.9 billion. USR Parent was originally set up as Arch Parent by Sycamore Partners in mid-2017 solely for the purpose of acquiring Staples, which at the time was a public company. While “Staples” is the name by which the company is universally known, it is more formally known as USR Parent, which is owned by New York-based equity firm Sycamore Partners. The end result? If Staples does indeed acquire Office Depot, expect CompuCom and/or the B2B divisions to be acquired or become stand-alone companies. By 2017, the company had divided into a retail business, a B2B business and Staples Canada. Meanwhile, Staples itself started focusing more on the B2B business after its 2015 merger with Office Depot was canceled. Should those two divisions be divested, Office Depot would primarily consist of its retail office supplies business, an area where the company has been closing retail stores. However, that impact was partially offset by a 20 percent increase in sales via its e-commerce channel. Office Depot’s business-to-business division, called the Business Solutions Division, reported third fiscal quarter sales of $1.2 billion, down 11 percent because of the pandemic. Office Depot in November reported that its CompuCom Division reported sales of $197 million in the third fiscal quarter of 2020, which was down 22 percent year over year because of the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on product sales and services. commercial business unit (the ‘B2B Business),” Staples wrote.ĬompuCom is a large national systems integrator that Office Depot in 2017 acquired for about $1 billion. “We may increase our proposed valuation (i) for logical strategic divestitures that ODP may execute to unlock value, such as the sale of its CompuCom business and/or (ii) if ODP conducts a comprehensive sale process for its U.S. ![]() In its Monday letter to Office Depot, Staples proposed that Office Depot divest itself of one or both of its business-to-business units as a way to increase its value. Staples, in its current proposal to acquire Office Depot, does not appear to be interested in the business-to-business aspect of its rival. Here are five things to know about the bid and possible outcome. This will be an acquisition that will be discussed and haggled over for some time to come. And given the difficulties retail businesses are facing during the pandemic, it is interesting to see the focus of this bid on the retail side of the office supplies business, with Staples actually encouraging Office Depot to consider exiting its systems integration and business services businesses. It’s not the first time the two have reached out to each other. Staples’ bid to acquire Office Depot is interesting for several reasons. That, Staples said, represents a 61 percent premium over Office Depot’s average closing share price over the last 90 trading days. Staples, known officially by its corporate name of USR Parent, Monday proposed to Office Depot’s board of directors that it acquire Office Depot for $40 per share in cash, or a total of about $2.1 billion. The parent company of office supplies retailer and business IT services provider Staples Monday unveiled a plan to acquire rival Office Depot in a $2.1 billion deal that proposes the eventual divestiture of Office Depot’s business-to-business-focused businesses.
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