Exabyte Considers Merger or Sale

July 7th, 2006: storage firm Exabyte’s VXA technology causing financial pain.

In a statement last Friday Exabyte revealed it had enlisted the services of Colorado firm St Charles Capital LLC, who specialise in merger and acquisition, fund-raising and financial advisory services. Exabyte says it is considering the options available. The company’s VXA tape storage technology has suffered strong competition and as a result has not sold as well as expected.

Exabyte has been in trouble for some time. Since 2003 there have been increasing staff lay-offs and the company has incurred losses for the past six years. On Thursday last week the company revealed in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that company co-founder, and chairman of the board, Juan A. Rodriguez was resigning as a director and officer of the company.

Exabyte provides low-cost storage solutions for small to medium businesses and specialises in tape disk storage. A spate of recent consolidations in the storage hardware sector has increased speculation about Exabyte’s future. Seagate has just bought Maxtor. Sun bought StorageTek. Quantum bought Certance. Quantum is completing its acquisition of ADIC.

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