Teledyne to Expand Its Test Business

Teledyne Technologies Inc., the Thousand Oaks conglomerate involved in a variety of technical instruments, last week announced it had agreed to purchase a Danish company that makes specialized electronic equipment that will boost Teledyne’s testing business.

Teledyne is to buy Xena Networks ApS outside of Copehhagen, Denmark, for an undisclosed price. Xena makes equipment and protocols that test high-speed Ethernet networks in a variety of industries. 

“The Xena Networks acquisition will further establish our leadership in the protocol test market,” said Robert Mehrabian, the longtime chairman, president, and chief executive of Teledyne.

Xena will fit in with Teledyne’s subsidiary named Teledyne LeCroy, he said. LeCroy makes advanced protocol analyzers, oscilloscopes (test equipment that display voltages and signals on screens) and other instruments that verify performance, validate compliance and debug complex electronic systems.

“The acquisition of LeCroy in 2012 provided a healthy and growing portfolio of protocol test businesses focused on PCI Express, USB as well as storage and networking technologies,” Mehrabian continued. “Since then, we expanded Teledyne LeCroy’s protocol test business with multiple acquisitions, including Quantum Data (for video), Frontline (for Bluetooth and WiFi) and OakGate (for storage devices test solutions). Xena Networks will be a powerful addition to this strong and growing protocol test portfolio.”

Teledyne, which owns scores of companies mostly involved in a variety of industrial instruments, said artificial intelligence and machine learning, high-performance computing and 5G systems all require ever-higher speeds of data transmission and fuel the need for new ways to check up on the next-generation Terabit Ethernet network components.

“The same network equipment manufacturers that today use Teledyne LeCroy’s network protocol analysis and error-injection tools also require high-performance Ethernet traffic generation and network emulation test tools to validate product designs,” the company said in its statement.

Adding the strengths of Xena’s systems to Teledyne LeCroy “will deliver a unique value proposition in support of semiconductor and network equipment manufacturers, network service providers, and hyperscale and cloud computing providers,” said Kevin Prusso, the vice president and general manager of Teledyne LeCroy. 

The announcement was made late Tuesday. The following day, Teledyne stock closed up $1.98 to $401.28, an increase of 0.5% when the overall New York Stock Exchange increased less than 0.2% that day.