Electronics For Imaging, Inc. Announces Planned Management Changes - Company Operations

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Nov 15, 1999

Electronics For Imaging, Inc., the world leader in enabling networked printing solutions, has announced planned changes to its management.

Dan Avida, EFI's Chairman and CEO, will transfer his responsibilities as Chief Executive to Guy Gecht at the end of the year, but will remain as Chairman. Guy Gecht, the company's President, will then be promoted to the position of Chief Executive Officer. Fred Rosenzweig, EFI's Chief Operating Officer, will be promoted to the position of President. The promotions will be effective January 1, 2000.

"Working with the EFI team, I have spent the past 10 years building EFI into the world leader for supplying connectivity solutions for digital printing," said Dan Avida. "Consequently, the decision to move on has been a difficult one, but I feel the time has come for me to engage in new endeavors in the new millennium. In July, we announced the promotion of Guy Gecht to President and Fred Rosenzweig to Chief Operating Officer. These promotions were well received by the company's customers and employees, and in the third quarter of 1999 we achieved record revenue and profits. This is a testament to Guy's and Fred's great capabilities."

"Fred and I have worked closely with Dan over the past several years, and have seen firsthand the great impact he has made on this company and the industry," said Guy Gecht. "We are proud to continue to build upon his legacy as leaders of this great company."

Dan Avida joined EFI in 1989, and was the Project Manager for the Fiery color server. The Fiery color server enabled the revolution in on-demand color printing and laid the foundation for the company's growth and success over the past eight years. Avida was named a Vice President of the company in 1991, President and COO in September 1994, and CEO in July 1995. Under his leadership, the company's revenue grew from $130M posted in 1994 to $554M achieved in the four quarters ending September 30, 1999, while net income in this period, $89M, represents 324% growth over 1994 net income of $21M. During Avida's tenure the company's book value increased from split adjusted $2.37 per share on December 31,1994, to $9.40 per share on September 30, 1999, of which $7.81 are cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

Guy Gecht has held increasing positions of responsibility within EFI's engineering ranks since he joined Electronics For Imaging in October 1995. His most recent post prior to his promotion to President was Vice President and General Manager of Server Products, a key position in EFI's executive management team. In this role, Gecht was responsible for the development of more than 75% of EFI's products. During his tenure at EFI, Gecht has been instrumental in leveraging EFI's technologies across its various product lines and in ensuring that time-to-market demands were met. Gecht holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Ben Gurion University in Israel.

Fred Rosenzweig joined EFI as Director of Manufacturing in May 1993, and has been a key contributor in EFI's management team since his promotion to Vice President in 1995. Throughout his tenure at EFI, Rosenzweig has added responsibility in additional functional areas, including purchasing, information technology, technical support and technical publications. He oversaw the design, building and move into the company's new corporate headquarters and has been responsible for operations during significant growth in unit volume. Prior to joining EFI, Rosenzweig was plant manager at Tandem Computers. He holds a B.S. in engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.

Electronics For Imaging, Inc. (www.efi.com), recently ranked among Business Week's "Information Technology 100," is the world leader in enabling networked printing solutions. The company's Fiery color servers incorporate advanced hardware and software technologies to achieve fast, photographic-quality color output and provide network connectivity for a range of devices, including digital color copiers from all leading vendors, wide-format plotters and digital presses. Fiery Driven controllers leverage these technologies to increase the output speed and improve the print quality of digital copiers and desktop color laser printers, while Fiery Prints are renowned as the reference standard for high quality, cost effective digital color output. Fiery color servers and Fiery Driven copiers and printers are installed worldwide in leading corporations, advertising agencies, graphic design studios and print-for-pay businesses. Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Foster City, the company employs more than 740 people and maintains 22 sales offices worldwide.

EFI's products are distributed by the company's blue-chip OEM partners -- Canon, ENCAD, Epson, Fuji-Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak/Danka Business Systems, Konica, Lanier, Minolta, Oce, Ricoh, Sharp and Xerox.