Teledyne Acquires Odom Hydrographic Systems

Teledyne Technologies Incorporated’s (NYSE:TDY) subsidiary Teledyne RDI acquired Odom Hydrographic Systems on December 22 2008. The company’s new name is Teledyne Odom Hydrographic Systems Inc.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Odom is headquartered in Baton Rouge Louisiana and is a major supplier of hydrographic survey equipment to the dredging port and waterways industries. The company had sales of approximately $10.9 million for its fiscal year ended September 30 2008.

Odom’s products include multi-beam and single beam echo sounders sound velocity profilers and other related equipment. Their latest product release introduced at the World Dredging Conference in 2007 are the ES3 portable shallow water multi-beam system and ES3-M multi-beam echo sounder with motion sensor and proprietary transducers; and the DigibarV profiling sound velocimeter used in a fixed mount near the multi-beam sonar head. The ES3 unit is 7.86 inches by 6.38 inches by 3.63 inches high and pioneers small portable multi-beam technology.

The company has 26 employees five of which are in research and development and working on several new products.

Richard Byrd former president of Odom now holds the position of Business Unit Manager with the same duties he had as president along with additional procedures related to being a part of a large publicly-owned company. He told IDR that while these new procedures are taking time to get used to the sale to Teledyne was providential and will give the company scope to work with its sister companies in Teledyne.

Teledyne Odom is part of the Instruments and Electronics group of the giant Teledyne and one of 12 companies in the Teledyne Marine group of companies. These companies were assembled by Teledyne Technologies Incorporated to address the needs of the offshore oceanographic and defense markets.

NOTE TO CUSTOMERS: ‘NOTHING WILL CHANGE’

Kim Dailey emailed customers and associates to assure them that the company’s activities and personnel will remain unchanged.

“As was the case with the other Teledyne acquisitions your day-to-day interactions with our company will not change. Rest assured you’ll still be dealing with the same individuals in the same environment you’ve come to know and appreciate” said Dailey. “We have however already begun working with our sister companies to determine how we can leverage our joint strengths and assets to better serve you” she said.

Dr. Robert Meh­r­abian chairman and CEO of Teledyne Tech­no­lo­gies said “Odom’s single and multi-beam echo sound­ers nicely complement the existing instrumentation products within our Teledyne Mar­ine group of companies. For example through the combination of Odom’s echo sounders with Teledyne RDI’s Doppler velocity logs Teledyne Benthos’ side scan sonar systems and Teledyne TSS’ inertial sensing systems Teledyne will provide an extensive line of precision products for marine navigation detection sonar imaging and bathymetric survey.”

Dr. Mehrabian has been chairman and CEO of Teledyne Technologies since November 1999. He is an internationally recognized authority on advanced technologies who has served as senior advisor in manufacturing and high technology processes to many Fortune 500 companies. The companies mentioned in his statement are all familiar to the dredging and hydrographic survey communities and were recently acquired by Teledyne Technologies.

COMPANIES COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER

RD Instruments Inc. of San Diego was acquired on August 29 2005 for $37 million. Renamed Teledyne RD Instruments Inc. the company designs and manufactures acoustic instrumentation specifically acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs).

Dr. Mehrabian explained that RD Instruments and Teledyne Geophysical Instruments both employ ultrasonic transducers to sense signals in water. “Teledyne’s existing lines of hydrophone arrays focus on passive detection primarily for the petrochemical exploration market while RD Instruments is a leader in active acoustic transmission and reception for oceanographic environmental and military applications” he said. “RDI’s Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers perform precise measurement of currents at varying depths in oceans and rivers and its Doppler Velocity Logs are used for navigation of civilian and military surface ships unmanned underwater vehicles and U.S. Navy divers.”

In November of 2005 Teledyne and Benthos Inc. signed a definitive agreement to merge. That merger added Benthos products including acoustic modems for networked underwater communication and a sidescan sonar system which complement Teledyne’s oceanographic naval and geophysical exploration instruments. Teledyne RD Instruments integrated Benthos’ acoustic telemetry technology into its ADCPs used for wave monitoring. Benthos’s hydrophones were already in use on Teledyne Geophysical’s streamer cables for offshore oil and gas exploration.

Teledyne Benthos is headquartered in Falmouth Massachusetts.

GYRO COMPASS DEVELOPER

On January 31 2008 Teledyne Technologies’ subsidiary Teledyne Limited acquired S. G. Brown Limited and TSS (International) Limited for £ 29 million (approximately $57.7 million). Headquartered in Watford United Kingdom TSS Inter­national designs and manufactures inertial sensing gyrocompass navigation and subsea pipe and cable detection systems for offshore energy oceanographic and military marine markets. Its inertial sensing systems and gyrocompasses are typically used in the dredging industry in conjunction with hydrographic survey systems. S.G. Brown Ltd. is a scientific instrument manufacturer whose founder Sidney George Brown developed an improved gyroscopic compass in 1916 and became a major manufacturer of gyros especially during World War II. S.G. Brown merged with TSS in 2000. Together the companies are now known as Teledyne TSS.

Explaining the benefits of this acquisition Dr. Mehrabian said “… TSS’ inertial sensing and navigation systems may be combined with Teledyne RDI’s Doppler Velocity Logs to enhance the navigation of subsea vehicles including Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). Furthermore when combined with the acoustic imaging systems provided by Teledyne Benthos TSS’ products can increase the accuracy of ocean floor mapping.”

TSS also has offices in Aberdeen Scotland; Houston and Singapore.

Teledyne Technologies has operations are in the United States the United Kingdom and Mexico. For the fourth quarter of 2008 the company reported sales of $467.1 million — an increase of 9.3 percent in sales over the third quarter.