Bruce Mahler Discusses Ohmega Technologies' Acquisition by Arcline Investment Management

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

I-Connect007’s Nolan Johnson catches up with Bruce Mahler, vice president and general manager at Ohmega Technologies, about Thursday’s announcement that Ohmega Technologies has been acquired by Arcline Investment Management. Mahler outlines the new opportunities this presents for Ohmega Technologies and discusses how this change in ownership will benefit existing customers and markets as well.

Bruce Mahler, vice president and general manager of Ohmega, said, “We are very pleased with the acquisition of Ohmega by Arcline. Our commitment to the long-term supply of OhmegaPly to our customers is enhanced with this acquisition. We’re also excited with the prospect of working with Arcline and Kevin Perhamus, the president of Arcline’s specialty electronics components group, and know that Arcline’s commitment to investing in Ohmega and OhmegaPly will serve our customers well for many years to come.”

For more than five decades OhmegaPly has recorded trillions of operational hours within billions of printed circuit boards across a wide range of applications including aerospace & defense, automotive, consumer, medical, and telecommunications. The company’s OhmegaPly embedded resistor technology acts like a resistive “blank slate” eliminating the need for discrete surface mount resistors, providing printed circuit board designers with a key tool for addressing contemporary electronic issues that require passive resistors or resistive films.

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Audio Transcript

Nolan Johnson: Hi, Nolan Johnson here for I-Connect007. Today I’m speaking with Bruce Mahler. He’s the vice president and general manager at Ohmega Technologies. Bruce, welcome to the conversation.

Bruce Mahler: Thank you Nolan. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Johnson: There’s some news coming out of Ohmega Technologies. Can you share with us what was announced yesterday?

Mahler: Yes, it’s rather exciting. Ohmega Technologies has been in the industry for over 37 years, and as part of our long-term focus for customer support we felt that it’s best able to carry on forward in terms of product and customer support, that it’s time for Ohmega to move on and be acquired. And in fact, Ohmega Technologies after 37 years was acquired by Arcline Investment Management, a private equity, multi-billion-dollar capital investment company, and we’re very excited about this. The actual acquisition occurred December 24th of last year.

Johnson: Okay, so that is big news. That’s a long company history as a stand-alone enterprise, and now you have a parent company.

Mahler: Our client has some very, very good visions of growth. They acquired us as part of a specialty electronics components platform group that they’ve invested in. And along with Ohmega Technologies, in fact, just recently they’ve also acquired Evans Capacitor Company out of Rhode Island, as well as TRM Microwave out of Bedford, New Hampshire. So the three of us companies, and there may be more announced soon, form a specialty electronic components platform geared towards military aerospace, (in the case of Ohmega), consumer electronics, new growth in 5G, and automotive, and other areas of application. We’re pretty excited about it. There’s lots of areas of application of our product that people are unaware of along with the traditional military aerospace and space-based applications. So we see that expanding and growing and a greater acceptance of embeddeds. And now with being part of a platform and having some sister companies or sister business units, really growing significantly and building on a 37-year legacy that Allen D. Levy started and grew as a company.

It all boils down, though, to customer support. We have an investment and we have a responsibility to see that they get product on an ongoing basis consistently, reliably, year after year for years to come. And it’s our client’s vision to grow, expand into many other areas of opportunities within electronic packaging. And so we’re very excited about this. We expect it’s good riddance to 2020, and I think we can all say that. And we all look forward to a really good 2021. The funny thing is, we had a record year in 2020 as a company. We had significant growth in all sectors, and we appreciate the customer support and the customer belief in us. So we look at 2021 as a great year of expansion of growth, new opportunities. And now as part of a bigger company with deeper pockets who basically said, “Go forth and grow, and whatever you need from our end, we’re there to support you.”

Johnson: Are you at a place to maybe talk some specifics about what we can see in the future based on this new configuration for Ohmega? For example, how is this going to affect what you do for product lines, and what does this mean for your existing customers as well as your new customers?

Mahler: Well, I do know that our client itself is very, very active in acquisitions of what they see as key customers, key companies with good growth prospects, good profitability. I think that the especially electronic components company that will be started with some pillars to stand on, Omega being one, we expect to have continued acquisition and growth. Part of that might be as stand-alone platforms or acquisitions within each company group. I think that is the focus, growth where it’s complimentary. For Ohmega, I think the key here is that we’re focused on growth and what can we do to better support the customer base. They buy our product, that’s our responsibility to always be there for them. I’m very excited to be part of this. I’m excited that the people I’ve known at our client, the ones that we’re working with, the president of the new group that I’ll be part of, Kevin Paramus, has been around for a long time within the industry, and just very good people to deal with. We’re very excited about things here.

Johnson: Will we be seeing you at upcoming industry events?

Mahler: Definitely like to be at the actual events, and I think some of the first ones that we expect to see, we’ll be at IMS in Atlanta. That’s coming up in June, possibly Satellite Show in July. Obviously, we are involved with IPC APEX EXPO. It sounds like that’s gone virtual again this year, and PCB West hopefully the latter part of the year. Nobody knows exactly when things are going to open up, but I’m excited about the idea of going out and actually physically seeing people again.

Johnson: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Bruce.

Mahler: Sure. Well, thank you very much, Nolan, and I look forward to talking to you soon, and lots of new things to announce hopefully in the near future.

Johnson: Oh, I’m looking forward to it.

Mahler: All right, thank you.

Johnson: Here for I-Connect 007, I’m Nolan Johnson. I’ve just been speaking with Bruce Mahler, vice president and general manager at Ohmega Technologies. Thanks for listening.