Enea acquires Openwave Mobility for USD 90 million
Enea AB (publ) (“Enea”) has signed an agreement to acquire Openwave Mobility, a company offering the industry’s most scalable NFV platform with solutions to mobile operators. Openwave Mobility has a leading position in traffic management for the fast growing area of mobile video traffic. The total consideration amounts to USD 90M and will be financed through cash at hand and the previously issued and announced bond loan of SEK 500M. Openwave Mobility is headquartered in California and generated preliminary adjusted revenues of approximately USD 27M in 2017 and an EBIT of USD 3M. The company has a rapidly growing and profitable core software business with good cash flows Enea is expecting to be able to further improve the company’s operating margins to near Enea’s overall profitability target by the end of 2018. The acquisition is expected to be earnings per share accretive already in 2018. Closing is expected in April 2018, subject to regulatory approvals.
“I am very pleased to announce this acquisition, a significant step for Enea, and our biggest acquisition to date. We are acquiring yet another very successful company and with the addition of Openwave Mobility, Enea will move up the value chain and establish a strong direct relationship with the network operators. We remain true to the networking and telecom domain, but we expand both our offering and addressable market, and we accelerate our growth going forward. This is an important step in Enea’s strategy to continue to develop a global software company in high growth markets, combining continuous growth ambitions with strong margins and good cash flow”, says Anders Lidbeck, President and CEO of Enea.
Openwave Mobility’s solutions for mobile traffic management empowers mobile operators to manage and monetize encrypted and unencrypted traffic. The solutions are in part based on technology that Enea acquired through the Qosmos acquisition one year ago, and it is currently deployed by 7 of the top 20 mobile operators worldwide. Openwave Mobility has also an extensive portfolio of cloud-native solutions for subscriber data management. The subscriber relationship is one of the key assets of mobile operators today, and Openwave Mobility’s solution helps tier one operators worldwide to monetize subscriber data.
“The combination of Openwave Mobility and Enea provides an exciting evolution and reflects a change in the overall value chain, where independent software vendors will play a bigger and more significant role moving forward.” says John Giere, CEO of Openwave Mobility. “Together we will become a bigger and stronger player, delivering a better integrated NFV solution with increased value for our customers and their end users.”
Openwave Mobility’s management and founders will continue to work in the combined business going forward.
ABG Sundal Collier has acted as financial advisor and sole bookrunner for Enea in connection with the transaction. Vinge has acted as legal advisor.
The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and expected to be completed during April 2018.
Key figures and facts regarding Openwave Mobility
- Initially founded in 2001 and active in its current form since 2012
- Headquartered in California, USA, with offices in the EMEA and APAC region
- Approximately 140 employees
- Preliminary adjusted financial figures for 2017: Revenues of USD 27M, EBIT of USD 3M
- Privately owned by Marlin Equity Partners.
Pressconference
Investors, financial analysts, and press and are invited to attend a pressconference where Anders Lidbeck, President and CEO, of Enea will present the acquisition and answer questions.
Time: 10:00 CET
Link: http://www.financialhearings.com/event/10921
Phone number: DK: +4535445575 FI: +358981710494 FR: +33170750712 UK: +442030089813
NO: +4723500254 SE: +468566426
This information is information that Enea AB (publ) is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency
of the contact person set below, on February 27, 2018 at 08:00 CET.
For more information visit www.enea.com/investors or contact:
Anders Lidbeck, President & CEO
E-mail: [email protected]
Julia Steffensen, Executive Assistant
Phone: +46 70 971 03 33
E-mail: [email protected]
About Enea
Enea develops the software foundation for the connected society. We supply open-source based NFVI software platforms, embedded DPI software, Linux and real-time operating systems, and professional services. Solution vendors, Systems Integrators, and Service Providers use Enea to create world-class networking products and services. More than 3 billion people around the globe already rely on Enea technologies in their daily lives. Enea is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.
For more information: www.enea.com
Enea®, Enea OSE®, Netbricks®, Polyhedra®, Zealcore®, Enea® Element, Enea® Optima, Enea® LINX, Enea® Accelerator, Enea® dSPEED Platform and COSNOS® are registered trademarks of Enea AB and its subsidiaries. Enea OSE®ck, Enea OSE® Epsilon, Enea® Optima Log Analyzer, Enea® Black Box Recorder, Polyhedra® Lite, Enea® System Manager, Enea® ElementCenter NMS, Enea® On-device Management and Embedded for LeadersTM are unregistered trademarks of Enea AB or its subsidiaries. Any other company, product or service names mentioned above are the registered or unregistered trademarks of their respective owner. © Enea AB 2018