Pitney Bowes Is Said to Get Blackstone, Carlyle LBO Interest

(Bloomberg) -- Technology company Pitney Bowes Inc. is attracting interest from buyout firms including Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group LP, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Pitney Bowes held preliminary talks with suitors about a sale last month, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Chief Executive Officer Marc Lautenbach is open to an outright sale or break up of the company, the people said.

No final decision has been made and the company may not be sold. Representatives of Pitney Bowes, Blackstone and Carlyle declined to comment.

Shares of Pitney Bowes jumped 8.7 percent before being halted in New York trading. The stock had fallen 28 percent in the 12 months through Wednesday, giving the company a market value of about $2.2 billion.

Pitney Bowes, based in Stamford, Connecticut, said in November that it hired Lazard Ltd. as its financial adviser and Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP as its legal adviser to explore strategic alternatives. The 98-year-old company, which provides postage meters and technology for e-commerce and logistics, reported net income of $171 million for the first nine months of 2017, compared with $177 million in the same period a year earlier.

Peter Grauer, chairman of Bloomberg LP, is a non-executive director at Blackstone. David Rubenstein, co-chairman of Carlyle, hosts the Bloomberg television and digital series, “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Kiel Porter in New York at kporter17@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, Devin Banerjee

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