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PROVO — Utah tech giant Vivint Smart Home will boast an enterprise value of $5.6 billion following a merger announced Monday.
Vivint will merge with a subsidiary of Mosaic, a branch of Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group Corp.
The merger will generate nearly $700 million in new capital and help the Provo company pay down a portion of existing company debt, though Utahns aren’t likely to see any short-term changes with Vivint.
“We have been looking for an opportunity to expand for a little bit now … (and) this felt like a great way to finance and support the company going forward,” said Vivint chief financial officer Mark Davies.
“The vast majority of the proceeds from this transaction will go to paying down our debt. … (That) will give us more cash flow to invest in the business because we're not paying interest on that debt. It also gives us an opportunity to leverage some of the experience and the businesses that are owned and managed by SoftBank.”
Vivint’s executive leadership and headquarters location will remain largely the same, however.
“We don't expect any short-term change to the business,” Davies said. “We've been growing rapidly and will continue to scale the business to a larger degree as we move forward.”
Vivint currently has 1.5 million customers on its platform and expects to expand from there, according to Davies. The merger will not only support the company’s financial growth but its product development as well — like the company’s new app that integrates both car and home security into one platform.
Vivint was founded by Brigham Young University grad Todd Pedersen in 1999 as an alarm company and was then acquired for $2 billion in 2012 by private equity giant Blackstone Group.
“As the smart home market rapidly expands globally, Vivint is in the early stage of a massive opportunity and is ready to create the future of how we live and interact with our homes,” Pedersen said in a news release.
Blackstone and other Vivint investors are expected to own about 78% of the outstanding shares of Vivint immediately prior to the merger. In total, there will be about $690 million of net cash proceeds at closing, assuming no redemptions by Mosaic’s public stockholders.
Blackstone has agreed to invest an additional $100 million in Vivint through an investment in the common stock of Mosaic immediately before the closing of the merger. A subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. has also agreed to invest an additional $125 million in Vivint through an investment in the common stock of Mosaic before the closing of the merger.
The remaining outstanding Vivint shares will be held by the current stockholders of Mosaic and certain other investors who are investing $150 million in connection with the merger.
