Telcordia is once again up for sale. The company's private owners Providence Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus believe they can get about $1 billion to $1.5 billion in an auction for the software vendor.
A report in the Wall Street Journal confirmed that Credit Suisse will oversee the auction and that Telcordia's owners are also considering an initial public offering (IPO) for the company.
In 2005, Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus purchased Telcordia from public sector integrator SAIC for $1.35 billion.
Although neither Telcordia nor Credit Suisse would comment on any sale, it would probably draw interest mainly from Telcordia's main competitors such as Amdocs, Oracle and Hewlett Packard.
Private equity firms buying and selling telecom companies has become a new fashion in the past year as the recent economic freeze has begun to thaw out. Active participants in the telecom buyout game include ABRY Partners and Carlyle Group.
ABRY Partners in 2010 acquired the former competitive cable RCN Corp., including the rechristening of its RCN's business services unit RCN Metro as Sidera Networks. Carlyle instead focused much of its attention in 2010 on purchasing vendors by acquiring wireless network and database provider Syniverse and coax and fiber wiring company Commscope.
For more:
- Wall Street Journal has this report
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