EXFO Inc. (NASDAQ: EXFO), a specialist in network test, monitoring and analytics platforms, announced the company has acquired 97.44% of the share capital and at least 95.07% of the voting rights of Astellia (EURONEXT: ALAST), a global provider of performance analysis of mobile networks and subscriber experience, following the closing of the second phase of a public tender offer. The announcement was made at the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona (Feb. 26 - Mar. 1), the world's largest gathering for the mobile industry.
With headquarters in Rennes, France, Astellia reported sales of €38.6 million in 2017, and has over 400 employees and more than 120 customers worldwide. The company's solutions and services help mobile network operators improve service quality, maximize operational efficiency, reduce subscriber churn and develop revenues in core network, RAN, LTE and SDN/NFV deployments.
"This is great news for Astellia's and EXFO's respective customers. By joining our strengths and technologies, we are creating unique capabilities to help operators keep pace with a quickly changing industry and ever-increasing consumer expectations," said Germain Lamonde, EXFO's founder and Executive Chairman. "With our combined scale, global market coverage, technologies, strong professional services and deep mobile expertise, EXFO and Astellia are well positioned for the next cycle of investments by mobile network operators. Our customers are transforming their networks to keep up with insatiable consumer demand for more bandwidth and better, faster mobile service."
Given that minority shareholders do not represent more than 5% of the share capital or the voting rights of Astellia, EXFO says intends to implement a mandatory squeeze-out of the remaining shares and de-list Astellia from the Euronext Paris Exchange. The entirety of Astellia's equity is valued at approximately €25.9 million on a fully diluted basis.
"Together, EXFO and Astellia are in a stronger position to help operators make the most of their 3G and 4G investments as well as deploy 5G, RAN and C-RAN infrastructures," concludes Abdelkrim Benamar, Astellia's CEO. "We deliver the automation, troubleshooting, network intelligence and insights into customer experience that are critical to our customer' business performance."
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