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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Itronix to be acquired by General Dynamics

Multibillion-dollar defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. announced Wednesday it is buying Spokane-based Itronix Corp.

Terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Va., said the acquisition will strengthen its ability to provide solutions to its military customers.

Itronix, which was bought in 2003 by Golden Gate Capital of San Francisco, makes durable handheld and laptop computers. The company recently announced plans to consolidate its 450 area workers in a building under construction at Mirabeau Point in the City of Spokane Valley. That building will be ready in December.

Itronix said it had no further comment on the acquisition at this time, so it’s unclear whether those plans will change.

General Dynamics employs approximately 70,800 people worldwide and had 2004 revenues of $19.2 billion. It has four large product areas, including C4 Systems, which provides products and technology systems for command-and-control, communications and network management.

If the deal is approved by federal regulators, which is expected to be decided in the third quarter of 2005, Itronix will become part of the C4 Systems group.

C4 Systems Group President Mark Fried said in a press release the acquisition of Itronix will allow the company to “bring even higher value to our core Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security customers, and expand further into select commercial and international markets which increasingly are calling for rugged computing solutions to meet their mission requirements.”

During the past five years, Itronix has expanded its share in the lucrative first-responder and U.S. military technology markets. Several years ago, it primarily focused on sales to mobile service industries, telecommunications firms and transportation companies.

First spun out of Itron Inc. in the 1980s, Itronix has gone through several changes in management since then. Itron sold the company to Telxon, an East Coast firm, in the 1990s.

Itronix later became a subsidiary of telecommunications company Acterna Corp., which declared bankruptcy in 2000 and sold Itronix three years later to Golden Gate Capital.

Golden Gate paid Acterna $40 million for the Spokane company and assumed between $25 million and $30 million of debt related to operations.

Itronix CEO Tom Turner said in a prepared statement that “the entire Itronix team looks forward to contributing to the success of General Dynamics and continuing to deliver the best wireless mobile computing solutions in the industry. I believe this merger will have tremendous benefits for our customers, our employees and the industry.”