SINGAPORE – Kulicke and Soffa Industries' acquisition of Assembléon is complete, but the new owners don't expect major changes for the longtime placement OEM.

K&S paid $98 million in cash for its latest prize, and the deal, which closed Jan. 9, brings to a end the company’s equity relationship with its founder, Philips.

Assembléon had 2014 revenue of approximately $90 million, and the deal is expected to be accretive within the first year, K&S said.

While Assembléon is known for its SMT placement machines, K&S was attracted to the company’s back-end semiconductor equipment, which extends the features K&S currently can offer. The companies’ respective customer bases don’t have much overlap, offering additional opportunities for growth, K&S added.

“We are interested in their focus for back-end semiconductor assembly that we don’t currently have: advanced packaging, fan-out wafer level packaging, CSP – that overall SMT architecture that is close in accuracy to back-end IC packaging,” Joe Elgindy, K&S director of investor relations and strategic planning, told CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY last week. “Assembléon gives K&S a new feature set to things our customers haven't seen. They’ve been making good progress in that area. We think we can help them dramatically grow that side of the business.”

“We really can’t stress enough that we love their customer base, which is 60% of their sales,” he added.

In K&S, Assembléon has likely found a long-term home. The firm was spun off from Philips in 2011 to H2 Equity Partners, which took an 80% stake in the firm in 2011. K&S will keep Assembléon’s management team in the Netherlands, where it has product development and a small integration operation.

Assembléon will continue to support its existing SMT platforms, Elgindy said. “We will continue the same kind of product structure, same kind of customer feedback. It really fits into our core values.”

While Elgindy declined to comment on Assembléon’s distribution partnerships with companies such as Mirae, he said K&S did not plan to force change. There will likely be changes to the brand name over time as new products are introduced, he said.

While K&S has reviewed about 60 potential deals over the past few years, and K&S rival ASMPT has been gobbling up major SMT brands, Elgindy was disinclined to suggest there is a larger acquisition strategy at work.

“I wouldn’t say buying a screen printing company is on the agenda any time soon. That’s not our broader strategy. Our focus has been geared toward the high-growth back-end semi packaging industry. (We) look at a lot of business opportunities that are new to us and I don’t want to say that we won’t pursue this (SMT) space, but our focus is still on dominating broad interconnect, and advanced packaging is a clear piece of that.”

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