On Wednesday, Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) announced that it has agreed to sell its Enterprise Systems Integration (ESI) unit to a consortium of Japan's ITOCHU Corporation and ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation, for a sales price of $90 million cash.
The ESI unit resells enterprise hardware and software, and provides maintenance services in Malaysia and Singapore. This is CSC's fourth such divestiture of the past four months, as the company continues to "realign" its business to focus on cybersecurity, big data, and cloud computing.
In a statement on the sale, CSC noted that ESI did $180 million in business in 2012, earning "mid-single digit" operating margins. Thus, CSC is selling the unit for a valuation not much worse than what the overall company commands -- about 0.5 times annual sales on 4.6% operating margins.
The sale is expected to close next month.
