Zebra Technologies to Acquire Fetch Robotics

The acquisition accelerates Zebra’s growth in industrial automation as part of the company’s focus on robotics in customer-centric solutions.

LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill. — Zebra Technologies (NASDAQ: ZBRA) announces its intent to acquire Fetch Robotics, a pioneer in on-demand automation.

Zebra expects to fund the $290 million purchase price — for the 95% of the business it does not already own — with cash on hand.

Fetch’s Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are used for optimized picking in fulfillment centers and distribution centers, just-in-time material delivery in manufacturing facilities and automating manual material movement in any facility.

“This acquisition is a continuation of what we expect to be a series of innovations that reflect our commitment to creating solutions that help our customers improve their operations through robotics,” says Bill Burns, chief product & solutions officer, Zebra Technologies.

Fetch is said to have the largest portfolio of AMRs in the industry and offers seamless integration with warehouse and manufacturing systems without the need for changes to facilities or infrastructure. Workflow Builder, Fetch’s drag-and-drop workflow development studio, enables out-of-the-box automation so that customers and partners can deploy automated material handling workflows in hours instead of months.

Fetch Robotics’ AMRs help reduce the impact of labor shortages by improving throughput, efficiency and productivity while working alongside people in fulfillment, distribution and manufacturing environments, according to the announcement.

“The acquisition of Fetch Robotics will accelerate our Enterprise Asset Intelligence vision and growth in intelligent industrial automation by embracing new modes of empowering workflows and helping our customers operate more efficiently in increasingly automated, data-powered environments,” says Anders Gustafsson, CEO, Zebra Technologies. “This move will also extend our ongoing commitment to optimize the supply chain from the point of production to the point of consumption. We are excited to welcome the Fetch team to the Zebra family.”

In addition to Fetch Robotics’ portfolio of AMRs, it offers Cloud-based enterprise software, FetchCore, as the foundational platform for deploying and fully integrating a broad range of automated workflows into manufacturing and warehouse operations and providing insights into facilities through machine learning on AMR sensor data.

Fetch has made strong progress as a Zebra Ventures portfolio company, according to the announcement. In its early-rapid growth phase, this high gross-margin profile business is generating annualized run-rate sales of approximately $10 million.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021. Vedder Price is serving as legal counsel to Zebra. Fenwick & West is acting as legal counsel and Evercore is acting as financial advisor to Fetch.

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