Mar 24, 2015
Lexmark International has announced it will buy software developer Kofax Ltd. for about $1 billion. Lexmark is the parent company of Perceptive Software, which is based in Lenexa, KS and has about 750 Kansas City area employees. Once the acquisition is completed, Kofax and Perceptive will be combined into a larger business content and management software unit of Lexmark.
Lexmark said the purchase will nearly double the size of its enterprise software business, giving that unit about $700 million in annual revenue. Lexmark, based in Lexington, Ky., had $3.7 billion in adjusted revenue in its latest fiscal year, while Kofax of Irvine, Calif., reported $297 million in revenue.
Scott Coons, Perceptive’s president and chief executive officer, said it was too early to say how much the acquisition would affect area employment.
“But we have a growing enterprise business; it’s growing nicely,” he said. “And we plan, over time, to fill up our new headquarters in Lenexa.”
He said in a statement that the combination of Perceptive and Kofax products and services “strengthens the breadth and depth of our offering, giving us an unmatched ability to help customers of all sizes, in all industries … connect unstructured information to their systems of record.”
Perceptive, which moved from Shawnee into its new headquarters last year, has been a strong performer for Lexmark, especially in recent quarters.
The Kofax purchase is expected to be completed during the second quarter assuming approval from shareholders and regulators. Kofax’s board supports the sale, and shareholders who own about 25 percent of Kofax stock will vote in favor of the deal as well, the two companies said.
Founded in 1985, Kofax has about 20,000 customers worldwide and about 1,500 employees.
The deal values Kofax at $11 per share. That’s a 47 percent premium to the stock’s Tuesday closing price of $7.50. This is the largest deal Lexmark has made in recent years as it’s changed itself from a primarily a printer maker to a printing, imaging and software company. In 2010 Lexmark paid $280 million for Perceptive.
Two years later, it acquired BDGB Enterprises, which gave it the data capture software company Brainware, for $148 million, and in 2014 it paid $251 million for business process automation company ReadSoft.
Lexmark announced in 2012 that it would exit its inkjet business in response to shrinking sales. The next year it sold its remaining inkjet assets.