Under terms of the acquisition, Infowave will pay a total of $8.4m for Telispark, payable in approximately 46 million Infowave common shares. Infowave has already completed the purchase of 74% Telispark shares, and will acquire the remaining shares subject to approval by Infowave shareholders and other conditions.
In addition, Infowave is also paying Deloitte Consulting LP, the largest shareholder of Telispark, approximately $8.4m worth of Infowave shares. Upon completion of the deal, Deloitte Consulting will have a stake of up to 19.9% in Infowave. Deloitte said it intends to sell the Infowave shares within five years.
This acquisition positions Infowave to take full advantage of the increasing market demand for both enterprise and carrier mobile solutions. By combining the application strength of Telispark with Infowave’s suite of wireless middleware solutions, we further extend our value proposition to enterprise customers, said Infowave CEO Jerry Meerkatz.
Telispark’s packaged mobile applications and proven implementations will help strengthen both Infowave’s enterprise product offering and its ability to penetrate key verticals like Energy, Utilities and High Technology. We will proceed quickly with integrating the Telispark technology and operations to mobilize applications such as customer relationship management, sales force automation, enterprise resource planning and field services applications.
Telispark was spun out of Deloitte Consulting in June 2000 and provides mobile services that help large organizations service and manage complex equipment and inventory. Its customers include Shell Oil, Nextel, HydroOne, the US Navy, SK Telecom, and Lucent Technologies.
Meanwhile, Vancouver-based Infowave also announced the appointment of three new board members: Gerald Trooien, Christine Rogers and Geoffrey Belsher. Stephen Wu has stepped down as a director.
New board member Trooien has agreed to provide a standby line of credit of $3m until December 31, 2005. In return, Infowave issued warrants entitling Trooien to acquire between 7.5 million and 18.5 million Infowave common shares at CAD 0.21 ($0.16) apiece. The credit facility has been arranged to give Infowave access to additional working capital to carry out its current objectives.
Last May, Infowave paid CAD 3.3m ($2.5m) for HiddenMind Technology LLC, in order to provide a front-end for its middleware. Then in September, Infowave acquired all of the intellectual property assets of Sproqit Technologies Inc in exchange for 4 million shares.
In December, Infowave received a $7.3m investment from Technology Partnerships Canada, part of a $26.5m project by Infowave to develop a software platform for secure wireless networking through mobile devices.
This article is based on material originally produced by ComputerWire.
