Last week, it was announced that Scitex Corporation will sell its Scitex Digital Printing (SDP) Operation to Eastman Kodak. SDP provided 65% of all Scitex Corporation revenues in 2002, and all of its profits. SDP is also the only company 100% owned by Scitex Corporation.

Homi Shamir, the CEO of SDP is also President and CEO of Scitex Corporation, and he will stay with SDP when it becomes an Eastman Kodak company. What remains within Scitex Corporation following the sale of SDP are investments in a number of companies, but no wholly owned operations. The principal one is Scitex Vision which is 75% owned by Scitex Corporation, created by merging Scitex Wide Format Printing with Aprion. Scitex Wide Format was established in 1994 as Idanit, and acquired by Scitex in 1998. To my understanding, it has almost continuously lost money in that time.

Aprion was established in 1999 as a spin off from Scitex's Advanced Printing Products Division and makes piezo drop on demand ink jet printheads and products. It has suffered significant losses and has, to date, accumulated losses of around $60 million. Scitex Vision has annual revenues of around $85 million. Scitex Corporation has investments in a number of other small or start-up companies, none of whom trade under the Scitex name.

This article is written about an event that has not happened, may not happen, but in my opinion is very likely to happen. What I believe will happen once the sale of SDP is completed is that Scitex will disappear as a brand, as the Scitex investors sell off these remaining investments to other organizations.

Examine the history of Scitex and its ownership. Scitex is a publicly listed company on NASDAQ (Symbol SCIX), but a large share of the company's shares are held by two Israel based investment companies - Clal Industries and Discount Investment Corporation. Between them they hold 44% of the shares. These two companies are owned by IDB Development Corp, and members of the Recanati family own more than 50% of IDB's shares. This ownership structure has changed very little over the past decade. Prior to this time there were other significant investors in the company including the infamous Robert Maxwell, who was Chairman of Scitex Corporation in the late 1980s.