Seagate to acquire Mac storage provider LaCie for $186 million

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Mac peripheral maker LaCie announced on Wednesday that it will be acquired by hard drive maker Seagate for $186 million.

The all-cash deal is valued at 4.05 euros per share, with Seagate to acquire 64.5 percent of LaCie's outstanding shares from Philippe Spruch, the company's chairman and CEO, as well as his affiliate. The offer from Seagate values LaCie at 146 million euros, or $186 million U.S., including acquired net cash of about 49 million euros, or $65 million U.S., as of March 31, 2012.

The two companies said the acquisition will combine two highly complementary product and technology portfolios, adding LaCie's premium consumer storage solutions and network-attached storage products to Seagate's consumer storage products. Seagate sees the deal accelerating its growth strategy in the consumer storage market, particularly in Europe and Japan, as well as adding engineering and software capabilities.

"This transaction would bring a highly complementary set of capabilities to Seagate, significantly expand our consumer product offerings, add a premium-branded direct-attached storage line, strengthen our network-attached storage business line and enhance our capabilities in software development," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO.

If the deal is approved, Spruch would join Seagate and be in charge of the company's consumer storage products organization. Luczo said Seagate is excited to have Spruch, who he called "a true visionary and leader," to join their business.

LaCie


"With the proliferation of devices and content being shared and stored today, consumer demand for high-quality branded storage solutions continues to grow," Spruch said. "We are excited about the potential for this combination to benefit customers and employees by creating significant scale and opening up new markets. We look forward to making the resources of a much larger company available to our customers around the world."

LaCie has been a major supporter of Apple's Mac platform over the years, and last June was one of the first companies to unveil a Thunderbolt-based external solid-state drive. Apple launched the high-speed Thunderbolt port on its Mac lineup last year.

Last September, LaCie began shipping the first Thunderbolt hard drives priced under $1,000. The Little Big Disk can be purchased through Apple's online store, and starts at $399.95 for 1-terabyte.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 37
    mike fixmike fix Posts: 270member


    The one company I trust acquires the company I trust the least.  This is not good news to me.

  • Reply 2 of 37
    tikimantikiman Posts: 68member


    Good job Seagate. Now maybe LaCie will get rid of those crappy Western Digital drives they insist on using and increase their product quality.

  • Reply 3 of 37
    jmgregory1jmgregory1 Posts: 474member


    With the new company to be named LaCiegate.  I'm actually surprised by the low selling price.

  • Reply 4 of 37
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tikiman View Post

    Now maybe LaCie will get rid of those crappy Western Digital drives they insist on using and increase their product quality.


     


    So you don't want them using Seagate drives in their products, even though they're owned by Seagate?

  • Reply 5 of 37
    bedouinbedouin Posts: 331member
    Argh. I have no problem with Seagate's internal drives, but I have had less than optimal results with their NAS units and externals. Kinda bad news.
  • Reply 6 of 37
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tikiman View Post


    Good job Seagate. Now maybe LaCie will get rid of those crappy Western Digital drives they insist on using and increase their product quality.



    I did not know WD was crappy. I've been using Caviar Blue, Green & Blacks for several years with absolutely zero failures. I really like WD quality.


     


    Like the ones in the Mac Pro


     


    http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/726517-REG/Apple_MC729ZM_A_1TB_SATA_Hard_Disk.html


     


    Edit: I see you are from Colorado which probably explains your opinion since that is a big Seagate location

  • Reply 7 of 37
    quevarquevar Posts: 101member


    I've generally thought Seagate had less quality than other drive manufacturers.  Western Digital has always been on the top of my list for quality, particularly if you get their black drives, but they do tend to be a bit pricy.

  • Reply 8 of 37
    stevenozstevenoz Posts: 314member


    The drives that LaCie used were not generally the problem. Their power-supplies were, which failed too often.


     


    When Hitachi bought G-Tech it was a good thing. G-Tech, an enclosure-maker like LaCie, had power-supplies that failed too often too.


     


    Now the G-Tech drives are buy-able again, IMHO.


     


    Hopefully LaCie will inherit some technical smarts from Seagate.


     


    LaCie has been around for many years, and this may again lengthen their life.


     


     


     

  • Reply 9 of 37
    wshuff4wshuff4 Posts: 47member


    If I gave up on a company because I had a drive fail, there wouldn't be anybody left for me to buy a hard drive from.  I've had equal opportunity bad luck.  Conversely, I've had drives from just about every company that performed without a flaw.

  • Reply 10 of 37
    myapplelovemyapplelove Posts: 1,515member
    Good news for mac users.
  • Reply 11 of 37
    im4gmgim4gmg Posts: 2member


    I was just about to say, I wonder if they'll call the new company LaCiegate. Haha. And I agree, the price seems surprisingly low, but maybe that's because I've become accustomed to hearing unrealistically huge numbers for tech companies.

  • Reply 12 of 37
    im4gmgim4gmg Posts: 2member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jmgregory1 View Post


    With the new company to be named LaCiegate.  I'm actually surprised by the low selling price.



     


    I was just about to say, I wonder if they'll call the new company LaCiegate. Haha. And I agree, the price seems surprisingly low, but maybe that's because I've become accustomed to hearing unrealistically huge numbers for tech companies.

  • Reply 13 of 37
    tylerk36tylerk36 Posts: 1,037member


    Buy them and take the best of them and use it then dissolve them and move on.

  • Reply 14 of 37
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    im4gmg wrote: »
    I was just about to say, I wonder if they'll call the new company LaCiegate. Haha. And I agree, the price seems surprisingly low, but maybe that's because I've become accustomed to hearing unrealistically huge numbers for tech companies.

    The computer market is declining the last year or so - and many of the laptops are switching to SSDs. The volume hard drive business has a questionable future. At best, it will be stagnant.
  • Reply 15 of 37
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Most of these hard drive companies are not here for the long haul and they keep merging. It's mainly Seagate vs WD now I think. Meanwhile, Intel, Samsung, Crucial, OCZ, Micron, Kingston, Corsair, Patriot etc compete in the growth market of SSD.

    The reality is, no matter if you can buy a 1TB HDD for $100 vs 100GB SSD, if you only have <100GB of data then you don't need to go with a slower drive.

    The vast majority of people will have less than 256GB of data so when it hits 50c/GB, the consumer hard drive market will dry up. Sure WD and Seagate can hold on for a while as a lot of people do need tons of storage but it's all down to price.

    SSD = $1/GB
    HDD = 10c/GB

    Then there's this:

    http://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/39645-silicon-reram-spotted-track-2013/
    http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/02/21/forget-ssds-here-comes-reram/

    Persistent RAM. No more loading data into RAM and no more expensive RAM. 256GB RAM = 256GB of storage. Roll on 2013.
  • Reply 16 of 37
    zunxzunx Posts: 620member


    This is a really sad news. Seagate drives are the best to lose data. Too many horror Seagate drive stories by now. Noisy, heat monsters. I rather want LaCie with Hitachi inside. What a shame!!!

  • Reply 17 of 37
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post





    The computer market is declining the last year or so - and many of the laptops are switching to SSDs. The volume hard drive business has a questionable future. At best, it will be stagnant.


    for consumer use I agree, SSD is the way it will go but with cloud storage becoming so fashionable, huge amounts of disk arrays are still needed. As personal storage become less local, it will become more cloud based. There certainly won't be any less data to store in the future. I can imagine that eventually all spinning platters will be in disk arrays in a data center.

  • Reply 18 of 37
    darryn lowedarryn lowe Posts: 250member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mike Fix View Post


    The one company I trust acquires the company I trust the least.  This is not good news to me.



    You trust Seagate?


     


    Seagate are crap. Of all the drives I've come across aside from Maxtor (which Seagate owns), Seagates fail the most. They are pathetic.


     


    In 15 years of IT support the drives that have failed the most go something like this:


     



    • Maxtor


    • Seagate


    • Hitachi


    • Samsung


    • Fujitsu


    • Western Digital


     


    in that order.


     


    Not saying the others don't fail but they don't fail as much as the first two.

  • Reply 19 of 37
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    bedouin wrote: »
    Argh. I have no problem with Seagate's internal drives, but I have had less than optimal results with their NAS units and externals. Kinda bad news.

    There aren't a lot of external drives I trust very much. I haven't seen one by a typical hard drive brand that instilled confidence, usually I use someone else's enclosure. It costs more, but the drive brands really seem to cheap out on their enclosures, or add unnecessary gimmicks that don't work.
    zunx wrote: »
    This is a really sad news. Seagate drives are the best to lose data. Too many horror Seagate drive stories by now. Noisy, heat monsters. I rather want LaCie with Hitachi inside. What a shame!!!

    I've had dozens of Seagate drives and they were all quiet, cool and reliable. I don't think I've had to replace one due to a failure, overheating, noise or other undesired operation.
  • Reply 20 of 37


    I certainly agree with you. This is just another case of the big fish swallowing the little fish and greed prevailing. Seagate has not made excellent drives for a long time and it's sad that Lacie took the bait.

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