LI's ChyronHego agrees to be bought by California's Vector Capital

The Melville-based broadcast graphics company ChyronHego Corp. announced Monday it plans to sell itself to a California private equity firm for about $120 million.

Vector Capital intends to buy all outstanding shares of the Long Island company for $2.82 per share in cash, ChyronHego said in a statement.

ChyronHego will keep its current headquarters, and its staffing levels will either hold steady or grow, Johan Apel, the company's chief executive, said in an interview Monday.

"We are a Long Island company," Apel said. "We have a fantastic staff out here, and moving the company would of course destroy or change that."

The company employs about 80 people on Long Island, 100 nationwide and 200 globally, Apel said.

Vector will be a "strong and long-term owner," Apel said. "The whole idea is to grow the company."

The purchase price represents an 18 percent premium over the stock's average closing share price for the six months ended Friday, according to ChyronHego.

Shares of ChyronHego closed at $2.80 Monday, up 9 cents from Friday's closing price. The deal must earn the approval of the holders of two-thirds of ChyronHego's outstanding shares, among other conditions.

David Fishman, managing director at Vector, said the San Francisco investment firm believes that "with strong capital backing the company will be well positioned to capitalize on the exciting trends in the sports, news and live television markets."

ChyronHego was formed by a merger between Long Island's Chyron Corp. and Sweden-based Hego that closed in May 2013. ChyronHego pioneered the news crawl at the bottom of television screens. Its hardware and software are used by broadcast and online news and sports productions for graphics and data visualization.

Private equity firms, which buy or invest in both public and private companies, have invested in several Long Island companies in recent years. Southampton cookie maker Tate's Bake Shop sold a majority stake to private equity firm Riverside Co., based in Manhattan and Cleveland, in a deal announced in September.

In December 2013, Manhattan-based private equity firm Wasserstein & Co. inked its $340 million purchase of Globecomm Systems Inc., a Hauppauge-based maker of satellite and Internet communications systems.

Frequently, companies bought by private equity firms subsequently go public or are sold to other companies.

In 2007, a group of private equity firms acquired Plainview's Aeroflex Holding Corp. for $1 billion. The company went public again in 2010, but the private equity firms retained a majority stake.

In May, it was sold to British defense contractor Cobham PLC for $1.46 billion.

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.