September 9, 2009 – Boston, MA – Covington Associates announced today that it advised Spire Corporation (Nasdaq: SPIR) in its sale of substantially all of the assets of its hemodialysis catheter business to Bard Access Systems, Inc.
Bard, headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT, is a developer, manufacturer and distributer of medical devices used by an array of practitioners in the process of gaining access to the circulatory and other select systems for the purpose of delivering chemotherapy, blood products, antibiotics, drugs or nutrition.
Under the agreement, Bard Access Systems will also receive a license and a sublicense in the field of hemodialysis catheters to use certain intellectual property used by Spire in its Surface Treatment Business, which provides coating and surface modification services primarily to medical device customers. However, Spire will retain all rights to this licensed intellectual property outside the field of hemodialysis catheters, and otherwise will continue normal operation of this business.
Spire made the decision to exit the hemodialysis catheter business due to the increased activity and growth in the Company’s core solar business. This divestiture allows Spire to focus all efforts on its rapidly expanding solar business and its medical products coatings business.
Roger G. Little, Chairman and CEO of Spire Corporation, stated, “The divestiture of the hemodialysis catheter business at this time is clearly in Spire’s best strategic interest. We continue to see tremendous opportunity in the solar market and can better capitalize on these opportunities with a more focused approach. In the next several years, a significant shortfall is expected between the increase in demand for solar energy and available production capacity, especially in the United States, leading to significant factory expansion and demand for new Spire Solar capital equipment and turnkey production lines. In addition to strengthening our cash position, this transaction will allow us to properly align our priorities and resources to capturing the substantial growth opportunities in the solar market.
The closing of the transactions contemplated by the Purchase Agreement, subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions, is expected to occur before September 30, 2009.
About Spire Corporation
Spire Corporation is a global solar company providing capital equipment to manufacture PV modules, turnkey manufacturing lines and solar PV systems. Spire Semiconductor provides processing technology for Spire’s silicon solar cell lines and produces gallium arsenide cells for solar concentrator systems.
For more information about Spire, please visit www.spirecorp.com.
About Covington Associates
Covington Associates is a specialty investment banking firm founded in 1991 serving business service, consumer, industrial, healthcare, and technology companies throughout the country. Focused on mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity capital raising, debt and equity restructuring, and strategic advisory assignments for middle market companies, Covington Associates has completed transactions ranging in value from $10 million to over $1 billion for both private and publicly traded companies. This is the sixth in a series of recent transactions on which Covington Associates has advised in the outsourced manufacturing space.
To learn more about Covington Associates, visit www.covingtonassociates.com.
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