U.S. software giant buys Israeli firm for 487 mln USD

Source: Xinhua | 2019-11-15

U.S. software giant Ribbon Communications acquires, through a merger, the Israeli company ECI Telecom Group in a 487 million U.S. dollars deal, the two companies announced Thursday.
The deal combines 324 million U.S. dollars in cash, 32.5 million Ribbon shares (worth 4.05 U.S. dollars each at the time of the agreement), and 31 million U.S. dollars from ECI's sale of real estate assets.
ECI Telecom, founded in 1961 and headquartered in the city of Petah Tikva in central Israel, provides products and solutions for communications and data networks for service providers, infrastructure and government bodies, as well as for defense and security customers.
The company has 1,700 employees and serves over 300 global customers.
ECI revenues from October 2018 to September 2019 were 376 million U.S. dollars.
Ribbon Communications is a global software leader in secure and intelligent cloud communications.
Ribbon is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts and traded on Nasdaq.
The two companies said "with this transaction, Ribbon and ECI will create a powerful, leading edge solutions provider with anticipated combined annual revenue of over 900 million U.S. dollars, serving customers in more than 140 countries, and 4,000 employees worldwide."