BRUNSWICK AGREES TO ACQUIRE LANKHORST TASELAAR, STRENGTHENING MERCURY MARINE’S EUROPEAN P&A NETWORK

Aug 15, 2017

Brunswick Corporation (NYSE: BC) announced it has signed an agreement to acquire LankhorstTaselaar, a leading marine parts and accessories distribution company based in the Netherlands and Germany.  Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.  Upon completion of this transaction, LankhorstTaselaar will be integrated into Mercury Marine to augment the engine maker’s strong and growing P&A business in Europe.

With 2016 revenue of approximately $25 million, LankhorstTaselaar sells an extensive array of parts and components, as well as offers next-day delivery to nearly all its 3,000 customers, many of which are new to Mercury Marine’s network in the region. 

The transaction is subject to usual and customary closing conditions including relevant merger filings, and is expected to close in the third quarter. 

“LankhorstTaselaar will help Mercury to advance its presence and service throughout Northern Europe, particularly in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Germany,” explained John Pfeifer, president – Mercury Marine.  ”It allows us to more quickly accomplish our goals of increasing share in this important and growing market, and the unified distribution network should greatly accelerate the future growth of the combined operations, with a broader product line and an expanded distribution network.”

LankhorstTaselaar’s workforce consists of approximately 50 people and the company will continue the planned move into a new state-of-the-art facility in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, by the end of 2017.

The LankhorstTaselaar acquisition is expected to have minimal impact upon Brunswick’s 2017 results, Brunswick Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Schwabero explained.  Further, the impact of this type of transaction has already been considered in Brunswick’s 2018 plan, which was originally presented to the financial community in November 2015. 

“We continue to seek opportunities to strategically grow our marine and fitness operations throughout the world,” Schwabero explained.  ”LankhorstTaselaar will bolster and solidify the distribution arm of our marine P&A business in Europe.  As we have done in recent years with BLA in Australia and Payne’s Marine in Canada, LankhorstTaselaar expands our reach and customer responsiveness in the global marine marketplace and offers us a larger footprint upon which to build in Europe.

“Pursuing the LankhorstTaselaar transaction is further evidence that Brunswick is executing its strategy to add operations, particularly those in fitness and marine P&A,” Schwabero said.   “Including this and other completed acquisitions, we continue to target $350 million of additional revenue from P&A acquisitions by 2018, which was originally shared with the financial community in 2015.”

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release are forward-looking as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about Brunswick’s business and by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. Words such as “may,””could,” “expect,” “intend,” “target,” “plan,” “seek,” “estimate,” ”believe,” “predict,” “outlook” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations as of the date of this news release. These risks include, but are not limited to: adverse general economic conditions, including reductions in consumer discretionary spending; negative currency trends; our ability to complete and integrate targeted acquisitions; our ability to implement our strategic plan and growth initiatives; adequate financing access for dealers and customers and our ability to access capital and credit markets; maintaining effective distribution; retaining our relationships with dealers, distributors and independent boat builders; credit and collections risks; retaining key customers; protecting our brands and intellectual property; absorbing fixed costs in production;
managing expansion or consolidation of manufacturing facilities; meeting supply objectives; meeting pension funding obligations; managing our share repurchases; higher energy and fuel costs; competitive pricing pressures; developing new and innovative products at a competitive price, in legal compliance; maintaining product quality and service standards; outages or breaches of technology systems; competitor activity; product liability, warranty and other claims risks; increased costs of legal and regulatory compliance; having to record an impairment to the value of goodwill and other assets; international business risks; attracting and retaining key contributors; and weather and catastrophic event risks.

Additional risk factors are included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2016. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and Brunswick does not undertake any obligation to update them to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this news release or for changes by wire services or Internet service providers.