Back in December, we reported that Israeli-headquartered video-conferencing specialist, RadVision, was in advanced acquisition talks with global collaboration and communications giant, Avaya. While those talks have taken awhile to unfold, today Avaya officially inked the deal, agreeing to an acquisition of RadVision in which shareholders will receive $11.85 per share — a deal worth some $230 million. The acquisition is subject to approval by RadVision shareholders, but the companies said they expect the deal to be final within 90 days.
RadVision has reportedly been looking for an acquirer since late 2009, when its largest client, Cisco Systems — which then composed about one-third of its revenue — purchased Norwegian videoconferencing rival Tandberg for $3.3 billion. The company’s share price, which had largely trended down since the global recession in 2008, spiked in April of last year, jumped in December when acquisition rumors began heating up. With the acquisition price set at $11.85 a share, RadVision definitely got a favorable shake, with the price set at the high end of the stock price over the last two years — especially considering shares were at $4.75 in late November.
According to Avaya’s statement, the acquisition will allow the company to begin providing an integrated suite of high-def video collaboration products, which includes the ability to plug-and-play on multiple mobile devices, including iOS and Android. RadVision has long had a full set of an enterprise video-conferencing products, and recently began targeting SMBs with a suite of video solutions, offering them at a lower cost than traditional, full-scale solutions, in an attempt to access both enterprise and SMB markets.
As such, RadVision’s video infrastructure will be integrated into Avaya’s unified comms platform, which gives Avaya an end-to-end video solution, and integrated video and voice solutions, while RadVision gets access to wider, more global distribution, and instantly becomes part of a large, multi-billion dollar brand.
As a matter of fact, Avaya announced plans for an IPO back in June of last year, but has since backed off. Instead, it’s been on an acquisition spree, RadVision being one of its largest acquisitions since winning the bid for Nortel Enterprise for $900 million. It’s a good pickup for the company, which has been named the official telecom equipment provider for the 2014 Olympics.
For more, check out Avaya’s statement here.
RADVISION (NASDAQ: RVSN) is the industry’s leading provider of products and technologies for unified visual communications over IP and 3G networks. RADVISION offers the broadest and most complete set of standards-based video networking infrastructure and developer toolkits on the market today. These products enable customers and partners to deploy unified communication networks and services, and develop video network equipment and device solutions faster and more reliably than ever before. RADVISION is driving the unified communications evolution by combining the...
Avaya is a global leader in communication systems, applications, and services. Learn about where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and the leaders that are getting us there. The company’s communication equipment and software integrate voice and data services for customers including large corporations, government agencies, and small businesses. Its office phone systems incorporate Internet protocol (IP) and Session Initiation protocol (SIP) telephony, messaging, Web access, and interactive voice response. Avaya also offers a wide array of consulting, integration, and other...
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