Genesys, a leading provider of customer engagement and contact centre solutions, has announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire SoundBite Communications for a price of $5.00 per share. SoundBite delivers cloud-based proactive collections, payments, and mobile marketing applications, as well as proactive customer service solutions to enterprises. 
The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of SoundBite and also by Genesys, will be accomplished pursuant to a cash tender offer followed by a second step merger. The $5.00 per share cash offer price represents a total equity value of SoundBite of approximately $100,4-million, on a fully-diluted basis.
The closing of the transaction is expected to occur early in the third quarter of 2013.
The proposed acquisition will strengthen the Genesys cloud solutions portfolio, building on its recent acquisition of Angel for self-service and contact centre solutions.
Cloud-based sales, marketing, and customer service solutions provide companies with the ability to better acquire, service, and grow their business with new and existing customers by offering purpose-built applications that can be deployed quickly by business users. Those users can be located in departments across the enterprise including marketing, accounts receivable, collections, and contact centres.
The acquisition is expected to contribute approximately $50-million in cloud-based revenue to Genesys, bringing the total to over $135-million for Genesys’ growing cloud business.
The acquisition will bring Genesys additional expertise in developing, marketing, and selling cloud-based customer engagement solutions and adds approximately 450 new end-customers to its existing base of 800 Genesys cloud customers. Combined with Genesys’ current cloud business, SoundBite will further extend Genesys’ leadership position in cloud solutions for marketing, sales, and customer service.
With the addition of SoundBite’s market-leading applications, Genesys will enrich its portfolio of cloud-based solutions for marketing, sales and collections departments, and strengthen its ability to address additional user communities across the enterprise.
The SoundBite applications complement the Genesys cloud-based customer engagement solutions with additional mobile capabilities, including self-service text messaging, and mobile marketing capabilities, including mobile coupons, in-store marketing, mobile Web sites, and on-package QR codes.
“Cloud solutions that quickly solve business challenges are in high demand, and offering these solutions is core to our mission.” says Paul Segre, president and CEO of Genesys. “The acquisition of SoundBite will expand our portfolio to help our customers meet these challenges, and continues our rapid expansion into cloud solutions in both new and existing markets.”
“This transaction provides our stockholders with a significant premium for their shares, and presents SoundBite with an exciting new endeavor that makes tremendous sense for the market,” says Jim Milton, president and CEO of SoundBite. “We believe existing SoundBite customers will value the benefits of being part of the global Genesys community made up of the world’s leading innovators in customer experience.”