Belgium speech recognition company Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV is to acquire privately held US company Application Technology Inc in a deal valued at around $17.5m. Lernout & Hauspie will be able to enhance its machine translation business with AppTek’s technology, giving it specific access to translation software for the Far East. AppTek already has English-to-Arabic and English-to-Chinese translation software and is currently developing an English-to-Chinese version. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the month and Lernout & Hauspie will pay the Mclean, Virginia-based company $12.3m in cash and the remainder in common stock, $3.2m of which is based on an earn out over the next two years. All 40 of AppTek’s staff will retain their positions and the company will be integrated into Lernout & Hauspie. Although AppTek is a US company, it has an office in Dubai, which will be retained. This latest deal brings the number of companies acquired by the Nasdaq-traded operation to eight (CI No 3,193) in the past year and a half. But according to Lernout & Hauspie’s director of corporate communications, Audrey Pobre, each one of them has fitted a specific type of technology or development skill that it felt it was lacking. Filling a gap in its translation services for the Far East was high on its list of priorities, and now the company believes it will be able to plow on and stave off its competitors. Pobre has not ruled out the possibility of more acquisitions in the future, and commented: We are always going too look at areas we need to grow in, in terms of technology and development capabilities.
