Office Depot to buy CompuCom for $1 billion, lowers guidance

Shares of Office Depot Inc. fell 2% late Tuesday after the company said it planned to buy IT company CompuCom Systems Inc. for $1 billion. That is a first step into "pivoting the company from a traditional office products retailer to a broader business services and technology products platform," the company said in a statement. Private-equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners LP owned CompuCom, and the deal will include paying down CompuCom debt and issuing new Office Depot shares. The deal would add $1.1 billion of revenue and more than $40 million within two years in cost synergies. In the same statement, Office Depot said it was lowering its outlook for 2017, saying it expects adjusted operating income to be between $400 million and $425 million, from an estimate of $500 million. The company pinned the downgrade to the impact of the hurricanes, lower back-to-school sales and store traffic, and temporarily higher supply-chain costs. The stock ended the regular session up 1.3%. A merger between Office Depot and rival Staples Inc. was scuttled last year, and earlier this year Staples was sold to a private equity firm.

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