Management at CalComp Seeks to Buy Company

Management at CalComp Inc. will make a bid to buy the company from Lockheed Corp., which on Tuesday put the computer graphics firm up for sale.

CalComp President William P. Conlin said he is putting together a plan in which current CalComp management, and possibly all CalComp employees, would acquire the Anaheim company from the giant defense contractor.

“We’re very optimistic we can do an employee buyout of the company and become an independent firm again,” Conlin said in an interview.

Lockheed has not endorsed the buyout proposal but has told CalComp management that it “would entertain an offer,” Conlin said.

“We’ll have to bid against everyone else,” he added.

Conlin, a former Burroughs Corp. executive who has headed CalComp since 1983, said he has been discussing “without much success” a possible buyout of CalComp with Lockheed for about 2 years. Lockheed acquired CalComp in 1986.

CalComp, one of the pioneering computer graphics firms, is also one of Orange County’s oldest and largest computer companies. The company employs 2,650 people worldwide, 1,200 of whom work in Anaheim.

CalComp was founded as California Computer Corp. in 1958 by a group of North American Aviation (now Rockwell International) engineers who worked in Anaheim. Like a page out of a high-tech storybook, the engineers started the company in a garage in Downey, relocating to Anaheim a few years later.

Conlin said that the buyout proposal is in the preliminary stages and that no financing arrangements have yet been made.

“We will have to find an investment banker who would back us and line up the financing to do the deal,” Conlin said.

The firm had sales of more than $450 million in 1988. The company is expected to fetch a price of between $400 million and $500 million, an industry source said.

The Anaheim firm manufactures plotters, digitizers and other products that are used to reproduce information stored in computers such as charts, graphs and text.

The company has manufacturing operations in Anaheim, Hudson, N.H., and Scottsdale, Ariz.

CalComp has about 25% of the market for computer graphics peripheral equipment, up from 20% 4 years ago, according to figures supplied by CalComp. The company’s chief rival is Hewlett-Packard Co.

Sanders Associates, a New Hampshire defense contractor, acquired CalComp in a $100-million stock swap in 1980. Lockheed acquired Sanders Associates in 1986.

Conlin said his objective is for CalComp to once again become a company whose stock is publicly traded. CalComp’s stock was traded publicly from 1960 until 1980, when Sanders Associates bought the firm.