8x8 (Nasdaq: EGHT) has in less than a week completed its acquisition of Contactual in a stock deal that bolsters its growing cloud services portfolio with contact center capabilities.
Under the terms of the deal, which was announced on Monday, 8x8 agreed to acquire Contactual for 6.7 million shares of unregistered 8x8 common stock. However, this share amount was reduced at closing by 215,100 shares in exchange for 8x8's agreement to pay statutory tax withholding on behalf of five former executives of Contactual.
Excluding any one-time acquisition and amortization expenses, 8x8 expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to it full fiscal year net income. In 2010, Contactual reported about $8.3 million in revenue, including about 10 percent of revenue received from its partnership with 8x8. As part of the deal, 32 of Contactual employees have joined 8x8.
Although 8x8 had been already reselling the Contactual contact center technology since 2007, acquiring the company deepens its hosted Software as a Service (SaaS)-based call center offerings.
While 8x8 has not been making the multibillion-dollar deals that CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) have made for the former Savvis and Terremark, 8x8's move represents a growing trend where service providers are crafting a cloud services strategy that includes both their own internal home grown effort to offer cloud services VAR partners, for example, and targeted acquisitions.
For more:
- see the release
Special Report: The most important M&As of 2011
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