(Bloomberg) -- Open Text Corp. has announced a deal to acquire Carbonite Inc., a provider of data-protection services, for about $800 million in cash, according to a statement Monday.
The transaction of $23 per share for the Boston-based Carbonite is a 25% premium to the close of trading Friday. Bloomberg first reported the deal earlier on Monday, and that Carbonite was mulling a sale in early September.
Carbonite’s shares are down 27% so far year to date, after a sharp fall in July when it cut its annual revenue forecast and announced Chief Executive Officer Mohamad Ali had decided to step down. That followed another sell-off in February amid investor concerns about the debt it was taking on to fund its $618 million all-cash takeover of Webroot Inc. in February.
The company -- named after the fictional substance used to freeze Han Solo in Star Wars -- offers data backup, disaster recovery and other services to people and businesses, deriving most of its revenue from subscription fees, according to its website. Including debt the enterprise value of the Open Text deal is $1.4 billion.
Canada’s Open Text Corp was also weighing a takeover bid for rival software firm Micro Focus International Plc, according to people familiar with the matter. Open Text makes software used for searching corporate intranets and managing documents. In 2017, it acquired Dell Technologies Inc.’s enterprise content division for $1.6 billion.
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. acted as financial adviser to Carbonite.
(Updates with value per share in second paragraph.)
--With assistance from Scott Deveau.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Hammond in New York at ehammond12@bloomberg.net;Liana Baker in New York at lbaker75@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Scent at bscent@bloomberg.net, Giles Turner, Amy Thomson
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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