American telecom specialist Likewize (formerly known as Brightstar) is continuing its divestment strategy in the world. After selling its shares in its Indian subsidiary to its local partner Beetel, Likewize has closed down some months ago its subsidiary in Spain. The company has been involved in a missing-trader scam in Sweden, which led to the bankruptcy of its local office, and the divestment of its other offices in Denmark, Finland and Norway which now trade as Modino. And now, Likewize has decided to sell its Turkish office, which saw its turnover plummet to €300m over the past years, to Arena, one of Turkey's IT distributors, for USD35m in cash.
Brightstar Turkey was established in 2009 in Turkey for the purpose of distribution of all telecommunication products and services - particularly smart phones and accessories - and has the privilege of having a distribution contract with Vodafone Turkey (Vodafone) since inception. Necessary agreement has been reached with Vodafone for the continuation of the existing Contract following the change of ownership on Brightstar Turkey.
Brightstar Turkey is currently engaged in the value-added distribution activities for many leading brands such as Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo, Honor, Tecno, Harman Kardon, JBL, Sennheiser to all sales channels and in particular to the business partners and Point of Sales of Vodafone. Following completion of the acquisition, Brightstar Turkey will also distribute other IT products such as Personal Computers and devices for which our Company is already a distributor.
Raj Shankar, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Redington Group, the main shareholder of Arena, shared his views on this acquisition: "Redington in the recent past has invested in Digital Technologies including FinTech (Paynet), Renewable Energy Technologies, Cloud Services Platform, IOT & Automation Technologies to help our customers in their digital transformation journey. We believe that Arena is well poised to emerge as a leading company offering Digital platform with the existing strength and deep experience of technology products and services portfolio as also with the acquisition of Brightstar and the 5G services to be provided by Vodafone Turkey. For FY 2020, Brightstar Turkey recorded revenues of €300m and generated higher operational profit margin than the margin generated by Arena Group in the same period. We believe that the inclusion of Brightstar Turkey to Arena Group will contribute significantly to a profitable and sustainable growth of our Company."
Arena Group CEO Serkan Çelik added: “Brightstar is a strong company with a 10% market share in the Turkish smartphone market. It is a value-added distributor with strong corporate roots, which we anticipate will be a very good fit with us, both in terms of business model and culture. Our acquisition of Brightstar Turkey, which includes the world's most important smartphone and new generation smart accessory manufacturers in its portfolio and has a very high potential sales channel as Vodafone Turkey's distributor, is the most important acquisition realised in the Turkish technology distribution market in the last 10 years. process.”