HNA Wants To Sell Ingram Micro For $7.5 Billion: Report

The Chinese company that owns California distributor Ingram Micro is in talks to sell the company for $7.5 billion, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The paper, citing a source, reported that HNA Group Co. is in talks to potentially sell Ingram Micro to Apollo Global Management LLC in a deal that would include $1.5 billion in debt.

A spokesperson for Ingram Micro did not immediately respond to request for comment from CRN.

Reuters reported in November that bad debt manager China Cinda Asset Management Company has advised HNA regarding buyers for Ingram. HNA bought the distributor in 2016 for $6 billion.

The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Apollo made an offer for Ingram two weeks ago, but HNA rejected it as too low.

The complex 2016 transaction required sign-offs from U.S. and Chinese authorities and took Ingram private, removing it from the NYSE where it had traded since November 1996.

In January, the company was forced to beat back rumors that HNA was planning to strike a deal to sell Ingram to rival distributor Synnex.

CRN asked Ingram CEO Alain Monie about the possibility of HNA selling the company during an interview in May. At the time, he said there had “never been any” discussions about selling.

“We represent a size and a global presence that they’re very interested in,” Monie said at the time. “And we have a framework within which we operate that is very independent from HNA. We have what we call our ‘ring fencing’; that really allows us to continue our development without having to look at all of these political [issues]. We feel very safe where we are today.”

However, when asked about the January sale rumor, he did say that HNA went “a little bit too far” leveraging the company in a bid for more acquisitions.

“I think they realized at a point in time that they needed to sell assets in order to make sure that [its business] was sustainable for the future,” he told CRN during that interview.

HNA Technology said in September that it still owed $3.55 billion on the Ingram buy and a $350 million payment was due in 2018, Reuters reported.