Harbinger Corp has signed an agreement to buy fellow electronic data interchange (EDI) and electronic commerce player Premenos Corp, which Harbinger gallantly calls the market leader in the area. It also announced the acquisition of Atlas Products International Ltd, a Manchester, UK-based EDI company. Harbinger is paying the equivalent of $230m in Harbinger stock, based on yesterday’s closing price. The Atlanta company is issuing 0.45 new shares for every Premenos share outstanding, which is about 5.7 million shares. As a result Harbinger will take a fourth quarter charge of between $20m and $30m and reckons it will be earnings accretive in fiscal 1998. For Atlas, Harbinger will issue 313,000 new shares in a deal worth $11.8m and will take a $3m to $5m fourth quarter hit. In 1996 Harbinger turned in net losses of $8.3m on revenues of $41.7m, with Premenos doing net losses of $3.0m on sales for $33.5m. The combined company will have more than 1,000 employees and projected revenues of more than $120m. This is the fourth acquisition harbinger has made this year. The new company will be the largest supplier of EDI to the midrange systems market, the two claim. Meanwhile, Harbinger released third quarter results showing net losses of $9.7m, up from $1.2m previously, on revenues that rose 36.8% to $21.5m Results for the 1996 quarter have been re-stated to reflect the acquisition of Supplytech Inc, which was completed on January 3 1997.
