Walk into any club in the world, and you’ll likely see a pair of some iteration of CDJ-2000s and a DJM-900 on the DJ booth. The Pioneer mixers are a standard worldwide, controlling between 60-70% of the global market of DJ mixers. However, according to reports from Japanese financial websites, it appears that Pioneer is in talks to sell off the remainder of its DJ subsidiary.
Pioneer actually already sold 85% of its DJ arm to investment firm KKR & Co. in 2015, however financial troubles from its parent company seem to have called for the sale.
Pioneer DJ did over $200 million in sales in 2018, but its parent company reported net losses in 2016 and 2017. Furthermore, Pioneer was recently bailed out during a restructuring process out by Baring Private Equity Asia, a Hong Kong buyout firm, to the tune of $930 million. In the process, Pioneer laid off 3,000 of its employees.
According to Nikkei Business, bidding has already begun with an expected price to land between “60 billion to 70 billion yen,” which is upwards of $500 million USD.
via Resident Advisor