Datasquirt Directors recommend purchase offer is accepted

New Zealand-based, ASX listed Datasquirt recently announced, subject to shareholder approval, the conditional sale of its complete business to LiveOps, a leading US call centre provider, for US$12.5 Million, a 37% premium over Datasquirt’s current market capitalization.As IT Brief and Telecommunications Review went to print, Datasquirt had entered into a conditional agreement to sell the assets and undertakings of its entire business. The directors recommended the offer be accepted and the sale is conditional on obtaining shareholder approval, among other conditions. All current Datasquirt product and services will be maintained and the new owners intend to keep technical development based in New Zealand.The acquisition of Datasquirt by LiveOps follows the signing of an exclusive, confidential North American distribution agreement between the two parties in May of this year."Today’s contact centres are under immense pressure to engage effectively with consumers who want multiple channels including social media. Corporate brands are at risk when consumer expectations are ignored,” Datasquirt Managing Director/CEO and Founder Aaron Ridgway said."LiveOps shares our passion for this global revolution. We are bringing to market a battle-tested, highly scalable platform. The integration of Datasquirt’s CONTACTTM with the LiveOps platform simplifies the process of adding consumer-desired channels that complement the voice channel. This union is a fantastic opportunity for everyone.”The directors anticipate that upon completion of the sale, which will only occur following the satisfaction of all the conditions, that there will be a distribution to shareholders of at least NZ$12.8 Million (NZ$0.399 per share) as a capital return. The record date for the entitlement to the distribution had not, at the time of print, been determined.As a part of the sale, the directors and several other key investors in Datasquirt agreed to use most of the proceeds of their distribution as shareholders from the sale to subscribe for approximately US$7.5M of shares in LiveOps, at fair market value.With its innovative technology and large, loyal customer base, Datasquirt is a recognised global leader for enabling contact centers to communicate easily in real-time with their customers through increasingly popular channels such as email, SMS, efax, web chat, and Twitter. Datasquirt clients such as Royal Mail Group and Wokingham Borough Council in the UK are using CONTACT to manage Twitter-based service delivery in their contact centres. Last year, CONTACT enabled Wokingham Borough Council to take first place in the Public Services sector category for their email communications with a score of 87.62% against an overall Top 50 email average of 74% and in September 2011 Datasquirt’s CONTACT won first place in the UK’s Call Centre Helper Best Technology awards.