SEC Filing Allows Glimpse of Changes at Post-Odyssey Micom

Things have changed at Micom Systems since the New York investment group Odyssey Partners bought the Simi Valley company for $334 million last August. For one thing, the company is no longer called Micom.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Micom Systems--a maker of computer communications equipment--is now Black Box Inc. Black Box is the name of what has been its most profitable division, a Pittsburgh catalogue business that sells computer communications equipment by telephone and mail.

The filing, made because Black Box is trying to raise $125 million through an offering of notes, offers a rare glimpse into how Odyssey, a low-profile investment group, is running Micom. Brian D. Young, a general partner of Odyssey who serves as president of Black Box Inc., could not be reached for comment.

Among the other disclosures is that the company laid off 338 employees from a Simi Valley-based subsidiary, Micom Communications Corp., and agreed last month to sell its Interlan subsidiary for $57 million to Racal, a British electronics company. Based in Boxborough, Mass., Interlan makes high-speed communications equipment linking computers and terminals in a single building. Earlier, Odyssey sold a money-losing Micom subsidiary, Micom Digital in Herndon, Va., for $9.65 million.

Other disclosures in the document show that Odyssey has so far cut $16 million in annual research and development, manufacturing and corporate costs. It also says the company is trying to sell excess real estate holdings in Simi Valley.

In the document, Odyssey says the $334 million paid to buy Micom includes $301 million to buy the outstanding publicly held stock, $14 million to buy stock options from employes and directors, $4 million to refinance existing debt and another $15 million in fees and expenses.

Micom was sold after a feud erupted among its directors, largely over the company’s lagging stock price and the ill-timed purchase of the business that later became Micom Digital. According to the SEC documents, that business had been losing from $5 million to $10 million a year since 1986 before it was sold in September, 1988.

For the fiscal year that ended April 3, 1988, the last full year it was a public company, Micom earned $9.8 million on sales of $223.4 million.