Mavenir is shelling out just less than $5 million in cash and debt for Stoke, a company that grabbed $92M in VC funding in under a decade.
Mavenir appears to be getting LTE security gateway vendor Stoke for a knock-down bargain price ahead of the traditional Black Friday holiday sales in the US.
Mavenir Systems Inc. revealed in an SEC filing that it is paying $2.9 million in cash for Stoke Inc. and assuming $1.9 million of the company's debt. Stoke had pulled in around $92 million in venture funding since 2005.
After it closed its final $17 million series E round in 2011, the company had even considered an IPO a "possibility." (See Stoke IPO Is a 'Possibility'.)
Stoke, after all, had high-profile operator customers such as NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM) and SoftBank Mobile Corp. using its LTE security gateway. (See Mavenir Buys Stoke for Security, Small Cell.)
Learn more about strategies for keeping mobile data secure at our upcoming Mobile Networking Security Strategies event in New York on December 3.
Financial analyst Richard Valera at Needham & Co. suggested in a research note that the acquisition won't be a "major needle mover" for Mavenir, but views the buy as favorable. [Ed. note: No kidding!]
"It sounds like Stoke was running at a small loss, but MVNR expects it will be neutral to MVNR earnings in 4Q14," Valera writes.
Mavenir's ambition for the Stoke hardware platform is to make it a virtualized, hardware-independent security system in the future.
The buyout is expected to close on November 21.
— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading
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