Leading defense solutions company, Mercury Systems, has announced the complete acquisition of The Athena Group and Syntonic Microwave for a total value of $46 million.
A privately-held company based in Gainesville, Fla., The Athena Group is a leading provider of cryptographic and countermeasure IP vital to securing defense computing systems. A world leader in differential power analysis (DPA) technology, they offer a complete portfolio of provable DPA-resistant solutions. Athena’s sophisticated patented technologies meet mandated Department of Defense requirements and mitigate reverse engineering attempts on mission-critical systems. Embedded in millions of ASIC and next-generation FPGA devices, their solutions are designed to solve today’s toughest security obstacles, enabling key applications such as artificial intelligence, mobile communications and cloud computing.
Based in Campbell, Calif., privately-held Syntonic Microwave is a leading provider of advanced synthesizers, wideband phase coherent tuners and microwave converters optimized for signals intelligence (SIGINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) applications demanding frequency coverage up to 40 GHz with 2 GHz instantaneous bandwidth. To address the rapidly evolving needs across the defense industry, the entire Syntonic product portfolio was designed for modularity, configurability and rapid prototyping in order to deliver unparalleled performance for next-generation electronic warfare (EW) applications.
The all cash purchase price for both transactions was $46 million in total. Both transactions are subject to net working capital and net debt adjustments. The acquisitions were funded through Mercury’s existing revolving credit facility, and are not expected to have a material impact on Mercury’s financial results for the fourth quarter or full fiscal year 2019.
According to Mercury’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Aslett, the acquisitions of Athena and Syntonic represent continued milestones for Mercury’s market and content expansion strategy. The company has a long history of collaboration with Athena in protecting critical Defense systems deployed across surface, subsurface, ground, and airborne platforms. Athena’s technologies expand Mercury’s BuiltSECURE security IP portfolio and extend their leadership in secure embedded computing, positioning well to capitalize on the DoD program protection security requirements for domestic and foreign military sales.
Similarly, Mercury also believes that Syntonic’s deep domain expertise in agile RF technology will expand and enhance its position as the preeminent supplier of high-performance, SWaP-optimized EW subsystems while enabling to further penetrate the SIGINT and ELINT markets with additional Mercury content. The acquisition of Syntonic gives Mercury’s defense Prime customers and government agencies access to highly differentiated sensor processing capability, thereby advancing national interests through domination of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Aslett believes that the new acquisitions, similar to previous acquisitions by Mercury, will enable them to grow the size of their total addressable market and reinforced strategy of becoming the leading provider of secure and safety-critical processing subsystems for aerospace and defense applications.
Mercury Systems is a leading commercial provider of secure sensor and safety-critical processing subsystems. Optimized for customer and mission success, its solutions power a wide variety of critical defense and intelligence programs. Headquartered in Andover, the company is pioneering a next-generation defense electronics business model specifically designed to meet the industry’s current and emerging technology needs.
