Performance Optics LLC has a specialty in eyeglass lenses.

Chris Newmarker

Japanese multinational Hoya announced this week that it will spend $476 million on Performance Optics, an ophthalmic lens maker marketing its products under brands including Vision Ease and Daemyung Optical.

Ramsey, MN-based Performance Optics employs more than 2000 people, with factories in the United States, South Korea, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. For the first six months of 2016, it saw a loss of $12 million off nearly $98 million in revenue, according to financial information shared by Hoya.

Performance Optics has been a portfolio company of Wind Point Partners.

"The acquisition of Performance Optics expands Hoya's customer reach, particularly through Vision Ease's presence in the Americas and its strengths in polycarbonate products and technologies," Girts Cimermans, CEO of Hoya Vision Care, said in a news release.

"Performance Optics provides HOYA with additional capabilities in polycarbonate, photochromic, and polarized lens technologies, as well as an expansion of our global footprint in high index lens casting to reinforce our position as a global technology leader in lens manufacturing," Cimermans said. "Importantly, we also will augment our global research and development capabilities, creating a new technology center of excellence outside of Japan."

The deal enables Hoya to become a broad-based leader in vision care, which is the Tokyo-based company's largest division, said Augustine Yee, Hoya's chief legal officer and global head of corporate development and affairs.

The stock markets have not been kind to Hoya this year. As of September 30, its stock was down 19% for the year, the 11th worst stock performance among 88 major medical device companies around the world. (Download the full spreadsheet of the 88 stocks here.)

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.

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