Black Box Corporation Announces Letter of Intent to Merge With Cable Consultants, Inc.

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 1, 1999--Black Box Corporation (Nasdaq:BBOX) today announced that it has signed a letter of intent to merge Cable Consultants, Inc. into a wholly-owned subsidiary, with a closing date on or before March 19, 1999. Established in 1980 and based in Atlanta, Georgia with branch offices in Birmingham, Alabama and Charleston, South Carolina, privately-held Cable Consultants provides technical design, installation and maintenance services for premise cabling and related products to customers throughout the southeast. Cable Consultants employs 250 people and has annual revenues of approximately $20 million.

This will be the eleventh merger of this type since January 1998 as Black Box continues to expand its worldwide technical support service offerings and almost doubles on-site annualized revenues to approximately $51M.

Commenting on the merger, Fred C. Young, Chief Executive Officer of Black Box Corporation, stated, "Cable Consultants is a well-established company with a superb reputation for quality. We are very excited about this organization joining our Black Box family. And with the recent addition of Key-Four in January 1999, also based in Atlanta, these two fine companies will provide us significant market share. Collectively, they have unique customers and provide each other complementary technical services."

Gregory L. Bostwick and M. Wayne Jones, owners of Cable Consultants, said, "As the growth in the telecommunications industry continues to explode, the combined resources of Cable Consultants and Black Box will allow us to be a major player in the industry." Mr. Bostwick will continue to serve as President of Cable Consultants and Mr. Jones will continue to serve as Vice President.

Mr. Young went on to say, "We remain committed to serving our loyal customer base with the best and most cost-effective technical support services available in the marketplace. Where we have selectively introduced expanded technical services our customer feedback has been very positive. Aggressively, but prudently, we will continue to geographically expand our technical services throughout the U.S. and Europe."

Black Box is a leading worldwide technical service provider of computer communications and networking services and related products to businesses of all sizes, operating in 77 countries throughout the world.