GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

So­lis (Er­ic So­lis Mar­ket­ing Ltd) has ac­quired ser­vices and prod­ucts provider Busi­ness Equip­ment and In­te­ri­ors In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd (BEI) which now will strength­en So­lis' mar­ket share.

The an­nounce­ment of the ac­qui­si­tion, which was signed by So­lis chair An­gel­la Per­sad, was made pub­lic in a no­tice post­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day.

"The board of di­rec­tors of Er­ic So­lis Mar­ket­ing Ltd wish­es to ad­vise that So­lis has ac­quired BEI. This ac­qui­si­tion in­creas­es our mar­ket share and strength­ens us in our core copi­er and print­er busi­ness as well as po­si­tions SO­LIS as a di­ver­si­fied play­er in the of­fice fur­ni­ture and of­fice in­te­ri­ors mar­kets," the an­nounce­ment said.

It fur­ther not­ed that BEI is the au­tho­rised deal­er in sev­er­al south­ern Caribbean coun­tries for:

• Ky­ocera print­ers and copiers;

• Dams Of­fice Fur­ni­ture;

• Tar­kett com­mer­cial floor­ing.

So­lis, a provider of mul­ti­func­tion print­ers, print so­lu­tions and com­mer­cial dis­plays in T&T, is the au­tho­rised deal­er for Sam­sung, Kon­i­ca Mi­nol­ta, hp, Lex­mark, Broth­er, Riso and Fel­lowes, and is a sub­sidiary of The Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty Ltd.

In the an­nounce­ment, Per­sad stat­ed, "We thank the for­mer own­ers of BEI who built the com­pa­ny for over 30 years and we wel­come their staff to our group to con­tin­ue its growth, an­chored on the com­pa­ny’s strong foun­da­tion."

In Ju­ly 2024, So­lis launched its ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) of 2,750,000 or­di­nary shares at $4, rep­re­sent­ing 33 per cent of the to­tal is­sued or­di­nary shares in the com­pa­ny.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Per­sad re­gard­ing how much the ac­qui­si­tion cost and how would it en­hance the com­pa­ny's mar­ket share.

She said the ac­qui­si­tion strength­ens So­lis’ mar­ket share both lo­cal­ly and in the south­ern Caribbean, and di­ver­si­fies its busi­ness in­to new prod­uct ar­eas such as of­fice fur­ni­ture and of­fice in­te­ri­ors.

Re­gard­ing the cost she said, "We are re­strict­ed un­der the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pro­vi­sions of the share pur­chase agree­ment, from pub­licly dis­clos­ing cer­tain de­tails un­less and un­til re­quired by law. We there­fore can­not share the trans­ac­tion de­tails pri­or to dis­clos­ing to our share­hold­ers in the ap­pro­pri­ate form and time."