Genlyte to Help Philips Shine

It's looking like consumer electronics giant Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG  ) has designs on shining all over the North American lighting market. Just months after it sought to take the lead in LED lighting with its purchase of Color Kinetics, Philips has announced it is now buying lighting fixture maker Genlyte (Nasdaq: GLYT  ) in a $2.7 billion deal expected to close in the first quarter of next year.

Energy-saving lighting is coming into its own. Philips is the largest manufacturer of light bulbs in the world and has come out in favor of banning incandescent bulbs. While I've already written about that being something of a dim-bulb idea -- since Philips doesn't want to lose profits if it stops producing incandescent bulbs unilaterally -- Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT  ) had the bright idea to begin actively promoting compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs, in its stores.

Lighting is undoubtedly powering Philips' future, as its other parts are sitting still. Philips has been muting its electronics business and attempting to benefit from the demand for energy-saving bulbs.

Another lighting giant, Siemens (NYSE: SI), previously teamed up with Osram to form an LED joint venture, while General Electric (NYSE: GE  ) last year purchased from EMCORE (Nasdaq: EMKR  ) the half of the LED joint venture GELcore that it didn't already own.

The Philips buyout of Genlyte represents a 52% premium to the closing price of the fixture maker this past Friday, and shares immediately soared more than $30 a stub in morning trading today. While the Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation sells fixtures to commercial and residential markets, the commercial side accounts for three-quarters of the company's revenues. Analysts have been noting that U.S. nonresidential construction actually remains robust so that companies like Genlyte and Acuity Brands (NYSE: AYI  ) still have bright prospects. Genlyte is expected to grow earnings more than 33% over the next five years.

Philips is paying about 1.8 times trailing revenues, but with Genlyte sporting superior operating margins to the bulb maker, the deal should immediately be accretive to Philips' bottom line. It will also make for the largest North American lighting company, according to Philips.

With yet another buyout in this market, the lighting industry looks like it may still be a bright spot for investors.

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