CEO’s Prediction: AND Will be Bought in Two Years
The CEO in question is AND’s Chief Executive Officer Maarten Oldenhof. AND, based in The Netherlands competes with Tele Atlas (TomTom is in process to buy it) and NAVTEQ (Nokia’s in process to buy it).
AND started pondering its sale in the last few months. On Oct. 10 it hired ThinkEquity Partners LLC for advice on among other things selling now or waiting with the hopes of a better price. AND’s market value has doubled to 54.1 million euros since word of the the Nokia/NAVTEQ deal. Unlike Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ which use field surveys AND uses land registry as the basis for its mainly European maps.
In the first half of 2007 AND reported a profit of 710,000 euros and net sales of 2.43 million euros Tele Atlas’s sales totalled 136.8 million euros and NAVTEQ revenue $362.3 million. Another tidbit from the CEO: The company would need one year and about 15 million euros to build a detailed North American map.
