Xerox, the giant American document company wants a piece of action in the lucrative Middle East market. Xerox has been shifting focus from selling boxes to offer Managed Print and outsourcing Services. The company has already been involved in lucrative project in UAE including contract to supply an automated system to sell public transport tickets for Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority and Abu Dhabi as well.
According to Ursula Burns the Chairman and Chief Executive of Xerox, the company is planning to invest more than $900 million to buy companies outside US. Middle East is Xerox’s primary target for investment.
“I won’t tell you any of the companies we are looking at but we are looking at spending $900m on acquisitions,” she said. “So if there are good ones in the Middle East, we will buy them.”
Xerox is very much interested in health care sector. Xerox offers administrative support services such as patient identification, billing and communications. Burns is hopeful to secure some contract in the Middle East within flourishing health care industry in the region.
Service is now big business for Xerox. In the last quarter it contributed $2.7 billion dollar to the company’s overall revenue, which is almost half of Xerox total revenue.
Despite company’s appetite for new investment Xerox recently has cut its profit forecast for 2015 for the second time after reporting its sixth-consecutive drop in quarterly revenue.
Shares of the company, which also forecast lower-than-expected profit for the first quarter, were down 3 percent at $13.19 on the New York Stock Exchange.
The forecast cut reflected a 5 cent per share impact from currency rate fluctuations, specifically the weakening of the euro, said Xerox, which gets about a third of its revenue from outside the United States.
