Amdocs, a provider of solutions to communications and media companies, has agreed to acquire Vubiquity, a provider of premium content services and technology solutions, subject to customary closing conditions.
The two companies aim to offer increased capacity to deliver enhanced digital content capabilities for network operators, video distributors, OTT companies, content owners and content producers.
The combination of Vubiquity’s expertise across the content ecosystem and Amdocs’ scalable solutions will, say the companies, enable customers “to quickly improve entertainment offerings and maximise revenues while gaining increased customer insights from content consumption”.
Amdocs reports that it is now uniquely positioned to deliver a set of comprehensive content offerings so customers can redirect operations, enable large libraries for global distribution, and efficiently monetise their content offerings. With Vubiquity, Amdocs will enhance its capabilities to deliver an enriched customer experience, including end-to-end solutions, for rapid deployment of new communications and media services worldwide.
“This acquisition uniquely positions Amdocs at the centre of increased convergence across the content community and video distributors including major OTT providers,” said Eli Gelman, Amdocs president and CEO. “Our joint offerings address the media and entertainment industry’s challenge in balancing the incredible growth of content and the many ways to consume content with making programming easier, faster to deliver and ultimately watch, while also delivering profits.”
Gelman added: “Vubiquity connects content owners like Time Warner and Disney, distributors like Comcast and Sky and OTT providers like Netflix and Amazon to deliver entertainment across platforms on a global scale.”
“Vubiquity has successfully been connecting content owners and distributors across many diverse platforms and evolving business models at the core of its support to the media community,” said Vubiquity CEO, Darcy Antonellis who will, upon completion of the deal, be joining Amdocs as head of the Amdocs Media Division.
“Our capabilities, coupled with Amdocs’ global scale and rich set of complementary solutions around monetisation, analytics and personalised customer experience will be truly unique, allowing us to deliver to a larger set of customers while solving key industry challenges. This includes helping video distributors deliver additional profitable offerings, as well as enabling content owners to focus on content creation and maximising licensing revenues.”
Vubiquity works with more than 600 leading film studios, television networks, and independent producers. Vubiquity has an international footprint in 121 countries and 80 languages and manages a 150,000+ asset library, providing superior quality and high volumes of assets for predictable day and date delivery.
These capabilities are of increasing importance to Amdocs’ 350+ communication and media service provider partners. Amdocs will showcase its media and entertainment solutions next month at its booth at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The impact of the acquisition on Amdocs’ diluted non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be neutral in fiscal year 2018, and accretive thereafter. The impact on diluted GAAP EPS will not be known until after Amdocs completes the purchase price allocation.
Amdocs expects to incur acquisition-related expenses related to operating adjustments, restructuring charges and other acquisition-related costs. The Boards of Directors of Vubiquity and Amdocs have approved the transaction for approximately $224 million (€180.02 million) in cash which, subject to the satisfaction of the conditions to closing, is expected to be completed before the end of Q2 of FY2018.
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