HELSINKI, Finland (BRAIN)—Mavic is no longer being shopped around.
Amer Sports, Mavic’s Finnish parent company, issued a press release on Thursday saying it had decided against divesting the cycling brand.
“Amer Sports has during the last months evaluated several different options and has now reached the conclusion that a divestment of this business would not be in the shareholders’ best interest. Instead Amer Sports will concentrate its efforts on further developing its cycling business,” the statement said.
Tommy Ilmoni, vice president of corporate communications for Amer, said Amer considered options other than selling Mavic, but said he could not elaborate.
"Mavic is a very well known brand and the interest toward the company has been very high since we announced that we were looking for strategic alternatives for Mavic," Ilmoni said in an email.
On September 1, Amer said it would begin exploring alternatives with respect to Mavic, including the possibility of divesting the brand.
The announcement sent rumors swirling within the industry about companies that may be looking at snatching up the iconic French brand. Even as recently last week at Taichung Bike Week there was some talk about Mavic’s worth and potential buyers.
Ilmoni said that Amer has a business plan for Mavic on how to grow the business and restore profitability.
"As we have indicated in our quarterly reports, Mavic has been affected, in a similar way as the entire bicycle industry, by the recessionary environment," he said.
Mavic finished the first nine months of the year down 14 percent, a result of the impact of the R-sys recall in January, a weak U.S. economy, a general trend toward lower inventory at the IBD level and a significant decline in OEM sales.
Amer Sports also owns Salomon, Wilson, Precor, Atomic, Suunto and Arc’teryx.
—Nicole Formosa
