Nokia has agreed to to acquire Comptel for EUR 347 million in order to expand its software products. The offer is worth EUR 3.04 in cash, a 28.8 percent premium on Comptel's share price the day prior to the announcement and 51.2 percent above the average price in the past 12 months.
Comptel would bolster Nokia's software portfolio by adding products for catalogue-driven service orchestration and fulfillment, data processing, customer engagement and service monetization. This complements Nokia's Service Assurance portfolio and would link service assurance and fulfillment to simplify management of heterogeneous networks. When combined with Nokia's OSS, BSS, analytics and cloud portfolios, Nokia said it would be able to provide customers with complete, end-to-end orchestration of NFV and SDN deployments.
Finland-based Comptel is a long-time Nokia partner and counts over 800 employees in 32 countries. It has completed over 1,400 customer projects in more than 90 countries and its products process 20 percent of the world's mobile usage data each day.
Comptel separatelty reported revenue of EUR 100.0 million for 2016, up from EUR 97.7 million in 2015, and increased annual EBIT to EUR 11.0 million from EUR 8.5 million. Its 12-month backlog was worth EUR 65.7 million at the end of 2016. For 2017, Comptel said it expects double-digit percentage growth in revenue and a comparable EBIT margin of 10-15 percent.
Holders of 48.3 percent of Comptel's shares have already endorsed the offer, and Comptel's board recommends the bid. The tender offer is expected to start 27 February.
