Newport completes sale of US-based metrology assets

June 4, 2002
JUNE 4--Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA) has completed the sale of its US-based noncontact metrology business to an affiliate of Optical Gaging Products of Rochester, NY, a privately held designer and manufacturer of precision noncontact and multisensor coordinate-measuring systems used for dimensional inspection.

JUNE 4--Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA) has completed the sale of its US-based noncontact metrology business to an affiliate of Optical Gaging Products of Rochester, NY, a privately held designer and manufacturer of precision noncontact and multisensor coordinate-measuring systems used for dimensional inspection. The transaction is the second part of an earlier announced two-step plan by Newport to sell the majority of its Industrial Metrology Systems Division.

On May 13, 2002, Newport announced that it had completed the first step in this plan by selling its contact-measurement metrology business, primarily relating to its CEJohansson subsidiary in Sweden, to Hexagon AB, also based in Sweden. Hexagon is a multinational engineering company and parent of Brown and Sharpe, a metrology company headquartered in North Kingstown, RI.

Total cash proceeds from both transactions, as announced earlier, are expected to be approximately $11 million. The transactions will be accretive to Newport's operating results as the divestitures eliminate continuing losses in the company's metrology business.

Newport's combined metrology operations generated sales of approximately $24 million in 2001 and incurred operating losses of approximately $9 million. The business represented approximately $32 million of Newport's total assets of $544 million as of December 31, 2001.

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