Comverse Shells Out $135M for Acision

Having shed itself of its BSS business, Comverse is wasting no time in honing its strategy to be a digital services provider, announcing this week it has acquired IP messaging specialist Acision in a deal worth $135 million.

Comverse Inc. (Nasdaq: CNSI) said Monday it would purchase UK-based Acision BV for $135 million in cash, 3.13 million shares of Comverse's common stock and potential earnout payments of up to $35 million. Comverse expects the deal to close by the end of the third quarter this year. (See Comverse Acquires Acision for IP Messaging.)

Acision provides IP messaging capabilities to network operators, over-the-top service providers and enterprises. Comverse says the complementary acquisition will let the combined company offer all three cloud-based value-added services and IP messaging. Their combined portfolio will include data analytics, enterprise application-to-person messaging, credit orchestration, two-factor authentication, M2M communications, RCS, WebRTC and APIs. (See Acision Lights Its Fuze .)

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Amidst financial difficulties, Comverse -- whose main customer is Verizon Wireless -- has been working to restructure itself as a digital services provider. Its first step was selling off its BSS business to Amdocs Ltd. (NYSE: DOX) for $272 million in April, shortly after it transferred some of its digital services employees to Tech Mahindra Ltd. as part of a plan to lay off 14% of its workforce. (See Amdocs Splashes $272M on Comverse's BSS, 10 SPIT Vendors to Watch in 2015 and Getting to Grips With Comverse.)

The companies did not say if any layoffs would result from this acquisition, but noted that the new company will be led by a team of executives from both companies under Comverse CEO Philippe Tartavull and at Comverse's headquarters in Massachusetts.

Comverse's stock had fallen 10.89% on the NASDAQ, to $21.33, by Tuesday lunchtime, a day after the deal and its first-quarter earnings were announced. Comverse reported a net loss of $26.66 million, or $1.22 per share, on revenues of $45.71 million, having reported a loss of $16.13 million, or $0.72 per share, and revenues of $65.08 million in the year-earlier quarter.

— Sarah Thomas, , Editorial Operations Director, Light Reading