$1.6 billion deal makes Itron global player in utility meters

Spokane Valley’s Itron Inc. is poised to become a world leader in utility meters and meter reading equipment after the announcement Sunday that it will acquire a Luxembourg-based company in a $1.6 billion deal.

Itron officials will sell more than 4 million shares of stock for about $235 million to help finance the purchase of Actaris Metering Systems.

The move more than doubles Itron’s income and creates a publicly traded company that rivals the Inland Northwest’s largest, Avista Utilities and Potlatch Corporation, with annual revenues of about $1.6 billion.

It also marks a singular success for a homegrown company that started as a spinoff of the local utility giant, said LeRoy Nosbaum, 60, Itron’s chief executive officer.

“When this deal is final, Itron becomes a very significant player on the world’s gas, electric and water utility stage,” Nosbaum said Sunday night. “We become the world’s premier supplier of meters and metering equipment. I would think the people of Spokane would think that’s pretty cool.”

Nosbaum said he has no plans to relocate the company that will now expand to some 300 million electricity, gas and water meters in 30 counties. The deal combines Itron, the leading electricity meter supplier in North America, with Actaris, the leading electricity, gas and water meter manufacturer in the rest of the world.

It also allows Itron, based in Liberty Lake, to export its proprietary electronic meter-reading technologies to the multiple types of meters that exist worldwide, said Tim Wolf, a company spokesman.

“We specialize in collecting meter data remotely and wirelessly,” he said, “so that meter readers, essentially, don’t have to get out of the car.”

Management teams will remain intact and the two companies will continue to operate independently, Nosbaum said. For now, that means the acquisition will generate no new jobs in the Spokane area.

The sale of more than 4 million shares of common stock to 10 institutional investors is expected to be final by Thursday. The acquisition is expected to be completed during the second quarter of this year.

Although the deal is not subject to U.S. energy regulators, it does require regulatory approval from a host of foreign countries, officials noted.

The acquisition has been more than two years in the making, said Nosbaum. It reunites executives – and friends – from two divisions of Schlumberger, the company that preceded Itron and Actaris.

“This is a wooing made up of past association,” Nosbaum said. “We all started kidding each other about putting the band back together.”

Sunday’s announcement had to be carefully timed for a window after the early-morning signing in Europe, but at a point when all international markets were closed, Wolf noted. Itron stock remained stable for most of last week at about $61 per share.