13.5 Interesting Facts about GE Lighting Being Sold to Savant

 
In 1879 the electric light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison and eventually became the prized possession of the Edison General Electric Company.

 

In 2020 General Electric is exiting the lighting business;  selling the remainder of its lighting assets, the consumer lamp unit, to Savant Systems.

 

As Cape Cod-based Savant strategizes to create the GE Smart Home, we dug a little deeper to better understand the deal between GE & Savant while exploring recent history and the near-term future:

 

1. Savant is a relatively young company -- founded in 2005.  With the long-term licensing deal, Savant will be able to leverage the clout and recognition of the GE name.

 

2. This isn’t Savant’s first lighting-related acquisition.  In 2012, Savant acquired LiteTouch, Inc. of Salt Lake City, Utah –  a company best known for residential lighting control systems.

 

3. GE's initial knowledge of Savant Systems:  Savant President, J.C. Murphy, explained "during the process of working with the GE Lighting team and the GE corporate team, it was clear that the Savant brand was not really well known, until you got to the top-tier executives in GE who all had Savant in their homes."  as reported by Residential Tech Today.

 

4. Terms of the GE Lighting deal were not disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal reported that the transaction was approximately $250M.

 

5. GE’s stock went up 7.2% on Wednesday, May 27, the day the company announced its plan to sell the Lighting business.

 

6. The deal is expected to close rather quickly with an estimated time frame of “mid-2020.” 

 

7. Savant states that more than 700 GE Lighting employees currently located in Cleveland, OH “will transfer to Savant upon completion of the transaction.”

 

8. Dun & Bradstreet reports that Savant has 127 total employees across all of its locations and generates $64.80 million in sales.  Based on the financials of the deal, we are presuming that the D&B info is outdated, that Savant has grown since the D&B report and/or some major funding helped accomplish the acquisition.

 

9. In 2007, GE had a market capitalization of $425 billion – which is similar to the current market cap of Visa, Inc..  Today, GE market capitalization is $59 billion, which is similar to the market cap of Northrup Grumman.  

 

10. With the sale of the Lighting business, GE will no longer have product lines that are primarily sold to consumers.

 

11. Due to the shrinking size of the GE Lighting business, it had ceased being a segmented financial disclosure in GE quarterly and annual reports in recent years.

 

12.  GE officially put the lighting business on the market in mid-2017 and dismantled the operations piecemeal over the following years.  It sold some overseas and automotive lighting operations in early 2018 and reached a deal later that year to sell Current. Reported by Bloomberg.

 

13.  Moving forward, GE will primarily be an industrial company with focus on four areas:  Aviation, healthcare, power and renewable energy.  GE Capital is the financial arm that the company often utilizes to finance large deals.

 

13.5  This is another example of lighting companies morphing into technology companies.  How will Savant integrate both the GE brand and GE people into its home automation, young company culture?  We look forward to the next chapter in the historic narrative of GE Lighting.

 

 

 

Don’t miss the next big lighting story…

Click here to subscribe to the inside.lighting InfoLetter
Just 3-4 emails per month and it’s easy to unsubscribe

May 28, 2020

OTHER NEWS