SPSS Inc said Tuesday it has acquired privately-held analytical applications provider Vento Software Inc in an all stock deal valued at $12.5m. Chicago-based SPSS, which sells data mining and customer relationship management software, issued 550,000 shares of its common stock to cover the cost of the purchase. The acquisition, which has already closed, will be accounted for as a pooling of interests.
SPSS said it purchased Vento with the intention of integrating its own analytical components into Vento’s suite of vertical offerings for the telecommunications, banking, healthcare and retail markets. The company’s flagship VentoMap product is offered in industry-specific versions and is designed to combine a graphical view of business performance with drill-down analytic capabilities.
With this acquisition, SPSS can move quickly into vertical applications, SPSS president and CEO Jack Noonan said in a statement. The company also expects the deal to be accretive to by about $0.02 per share in the first 12 months. Vento’s estimated 1999 calendar year revenues should be about $2m, and SPSS said it hopes to double that in the next year. SPSS plans to continue to develop and market the Vento products and will maintain the operations in Vento’s Miami office.
