Transaction Extends Absolute's Asset Tracking Capability Into a Fully featured Asset Management product Suite
Vancouver, Canada: December 3, 2009 – Absolute® Software Corporation (“Absolute” or the “Company”) (TSX: ABT) announced today that it has acquired the assets of Germany-based Pole Position Software GmbH (“Pole Position Software”), which substantially consist of intellectual property related to LANrev, a comprehensive computer systems management software application for PCs, Mac® and iPhone®. The new offering will be branded Absolute® Asset Management and will be sold as an add-on term license for new and existing Computrace customers and as a standalone enterprise solution.
LANrev provides a suite of easy to use tools that enable organizations to efficiently manage and track computer assets, lowering total cost of ownership; including license management, automated patch management, software metering, software distribution, configuration management, and power management. LANrev works seamlessly with PCs and Apple® computers, or any combination of the two. LANrev is a proven and robust solution with a U.S.-centric reference customer base of approximately 200,000 seats that span the education, corporate, government and healthcare market verticals and consist of clients such as NASA, Time Warner and Chicago Public Schools. LANrev is currently profitable and cash flow positive.
Under the terms of the Purchase Agreement, US$9.6 million in cash is being paid immediately with an additional US$2.5 million and 500,000 common shares to be paid over a three-year period. Absolute anticipates a tax savings of about US$4 million related to the transaction. Absolute expects this transaction to be neutral to cash from operating activities in fiscal 2010 and accretive to cash from operating activities in fiscal 2011. As the transaction will not have a material impact on Absolute’s fiscal 2010 financial results, the Company is not adjusting its Sales Contract and cash from operating activities guidance at this time.
“As the endpoint management and data protection markets continue to merge, adding industry-leading LANrev to our product portfolio tightly aligns with our strategy to further strengthen our competitive position in the asset management and data protection market,” said John Livingston Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Absolute Software. “LANrev complements our existing offerings giving us a unique platform amongst the leading Asset Management vendors. This acquisition leverages our existing sales channels, Software-as-a-Service business model, current customer base and unique embedded position in the computer firmware to drive growth over the long-term.”
Early in calendar 2010, the Company will formally launch Absolute Asset Management and commence an integrated sales and marketing program. Initially, Absolute will offer Absolute Asset Management as a separate add-on product to its current suite of offerings, with a fully integrated version to be launched during calendar 2010.
“We are excited about the accelerated growth opportunity this transaction creates for our LANrev technology,” said Martin Bestmann of Pole Position Software. “By joining forces with Absolute, we are gaining access to more robust sales channels as well as a larger marketing, research and development and customer support infrastructure. We have already been winning deals over the leading asset management vendors and expect to rapidly increase our penetration. In addition, together with the Absolute development team, we will be able to expand our feature sets and leverage Computrace to further differentiate our product offering.”
Notice of Conference Call
Absolute Software will hold a conference call to discuss the contents of this release on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 5:30 a.m. PT (8:30 a.m. ET). All interested parties can join the call by dialing 1-416-644-3424 or 1-800-732-1073. Please dial-in 15 minutes prior to the call to secure a line. The conference call will be archived for replay until Thursday, December 10, 2009 at midnight. To access the archived conference call, please dial 416-640-1917 or 1- 877-289-8525 and enter the reservation code 4190315 followed by number sign.
A live audio Webcast of the conference call will be available at www.absolute.com and www.newswire.ca . Please connect at least 15 minutes prior to the conference call to ensure adequate time for any software download that may be required to join the Webcast. An archived replay of the Webcast will be available for 365 days at www.newswire.ca.