ÚOHS allowed the Carlyle Fund to purchase a majority stake in Meopta-optika

The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) has allowed the multinational investment fund Carlyle Group to buy a majority stake in the company Meopta-optika in Přerov. The fund bought the stake through Prism BidCo, according to the database of decisions of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection on its website.

"In the proceedings, the Office verified that the transaction under review meets the conditions for the application of the simplified procedure for merger clearance. The Authority has found that the merger will not result in a significant distortion of competition and therefore issues a decision on the clearance of the merger," the ÚOHS said in its decision. The Rausnitz family, which previously owned Meopta, will retain a minority stake in the Přerov-based company.

Prism BidCo was established for the purpose of this particular transaction. The Carlyle Group's fund in the Czech Republic owns the start-up Phrase, which is developing a cloud-based platform for automating and improving the efficiency of language translation, and since last year also a majority stake in Tescan Orsay, a Brno-based manufacturer of electron microscopes. In Europe, the Carlyle Group has offices in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.

The Meopta campus in Prerov comprises 140,000 square metres of production space. Meopta employs more than 1,700 people, including more than 300 in research and development.

In 2021, Meopta reported a record net profit of CZK 806.4 million, up almost eightfold year-on-year. The company mainly due to higher demand for optoelectronics for the semiconductor industry and dental medicine earned CZK 3.675 billion in 2021. Revenues rose by CZK 1 billion year-on-year and were the highest in the company's history.

The bulk of Meopta's sales the year before last were in strategic systems, which includes optoelectronics. In this product category, the company earned CZK 2.793 billion. This was followed by free optics (CZK 350.3 million), sports optics (CZK 343.2 million) and military technology (CZK 141.1 million). About 90 percent of Meopta-optics' production in 2021 was exported to more than 70 countries.

Source: ÚOHS and CTK