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October 11, 1987

TELEX PRICE SIGNALS THAT $888m EDELMAN BID IS INADEQUATE

By CBR Staff Writer

Telex Corp shares soared $9.25 to $70.25 when trading opened on Wall Street Friday, emphatically declaring that a $65 a share offer for the Tulsa, Oklahoma company from Asher Edelman’s fiefdoms, Datapoint Corp and Intelogic Trace Inc, was insufficient to win the day. Edelman rev- ealed plans for the cash tender offer after the market closed on Thurs- day night, and launched it Friday morning with an advertisement in US editions of the Wall Street Journal. Edelman, who has already acquired and dismembered three computer companies, Management Assistance Inc, Mo- hawk Data Sciences Inc and Datapoint – Intelogic was spun out of Data- point, has put together TLX Acquisition Corp to make the offer. This is described as an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of another newly-crea- ted entity, TLX Partners, established as a New York general partnership in which subsidiaries of Datapoint and Intelogic Trace are the partners. Edelman has already built up an 7.8% stake in Telex, buying in the mark- et after the share price plunged in the wake of the company’s September 14 announcement that its second quarter profits would be below expectat- ions (CI No 767); as a result, he was able to buy them up at an average of only $49.70 a share. Edelman’s bid is worth $888m, not counting the shares he already holds, but taking into account obligations that will be assumed, will have a total value of $1,200m. He has arranged $600m in short-term bridging finance, but has not yet secured the bank credit he needs, and the offer, as well as being conditional on acceptances to take his total to 51%, depends on the bank credit being forthcoming. He sees Telex as a superb fit with Datapoint and Intelogic, but a counter- offer is highly likely. Telex makes tape transports for mainframes, and integrates other IBM-compatible peripherals for both 370s and System 38 and 36, but its main business now is 3270-compatible display terminal systems, some including Personalikes. Its biggest attraction is its dominance of the airline reservation terminal business, won by virtue of its acquisition of the 3270 terminals business of Raytheon Data Systems, and this business alone is likely to be enough to attract competing bids for the company. Telex Corp had still not responded to the Edelman bid by the time we closed on Friday.

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