Prime View Ups Terms Of Deal For E Ink

Kindle DX

With some shareholders threatening not to approve Taiwan-based Prime View International‘s offer to purchase E Ink, Prime View has now upped the terms of its agreement to buy the company, which makes display technology vital to the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Reader. In addition to the $215 million in cash it had already offered, Prime View is now adding 120 million preferred shares that can be converted into common stock if Prime View’s stock increases from 50 to 80 Taiwanese dollars over the next three years (By my calculation, that could add $300 million to the value of the deal at current exchange rates).

Prime View says it’s improving the terms because of the “explosive growth” of the ePaper market and “rapidly improving financial performance” at E Ink. But there were reports that in its previous incarnation, shareholders, who had put more than $170 million into E Ink over the last 12 years, would have voted down the deal because it was not lucrative enough. In fact, Prime View now says it has “irrevocable written consent from major E Ink shareholders representing sufficient holdings to attain shareholder approval.”

The release also includes some new details about E Ink’s financial performance. Prime View says that E Ink’s revenue was $96 million during the first nine months of the year, up 250 percent from a year ago.

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