Headquarters of Astellia

Exfo acquires part of the capital of Astellia before offering it completely

  • Canadian Exfo acquires 33.1% of Astellia’s capital and announces its intention to file a voluntary take-over bid for the French company based in Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande near Rennes.
  • In the end, this transaction will value the entire share capital of Astellia at approximately € 25.9 million.
  • Founded in 2000, Astellia employs 480 people and realizes 78% of its turnover at export.

 
Exfo entered into an agreement with the founding shareholders of Astellia to acquire all of their shareholdings, representing 25.4% of the share capital of Astellia, for a price of € 10 per Astellia share. The transaction allows for a friendly industry combination with strong support from Astellia’s management and reference shareholders.

Exfo also entered into an agreement with Isatis Capital to acquire at the same price the majority of its shareholding, representing 7.7% of Astellia’s share capital, enabling Exfo to hold a total of 33.1% Astellia.

Under the terms of the agreements, Exfo will acquire Christian Queffelec (President of Astellia), Frédéric Vergine (Director of strategic customer commitments), Julien Lecoeuvre (Innovation and Technology Director) and Emmanuel Audousset (Director of International Accounts and Indirect Sales ) of all of their shareholdings in Astellia and with Isatis Capital, the majority of its shareholding in Astellia. At the end of these acquisitions, which have no suspensive conditions, Exfo will hold a total of 33.1% of the share capital of Astellia for a total amount of 8.6 million euros, ie a price of 10 euros per Astellia share.

Following completion of this acquisition, and following the procedure for information and consultation with Astellia’s personnel representative institutions, Exfo will launch a voluntary cash tender offer in order to acquire the remaining capital of the Astellia at the same price.

This transaction values ​​the entire capital of Astellia (on a fully diluted basis) at approximately € 25.9 million.

The tender offer is subject to the usual conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.

“This investment in Astellia is directly aligned with our strategy of increasing our critical mass, our customer base and expanding our addressable market in the global industry of analytics and service assurance systems,” said Germain Lamonde, Executive Chairman of the Board of Exfo. “If our takeover bid materializes, it would allow us to combine Astellia’s solutions and services with those of Exfo to become a global leader in network monitoring and analysis and targeting opportunities such as network virtualization, 5G and the internet of objects. ”

“This combination will strengthen our ability to better meet our customers’ expectations, expand our market coverage and accelerate our technological and commercial development,” said Christian Queffelec, President of Astellia.

Founded in 2000, following the merger of Edixia Telecom Technologies and Qositel, Astellia specializes in the analysis of mobile network performance and subscriber experience, enabling mobile operators to efficiency of their infrastructure, quality of services, reduce the risk of loss of customers and develop their income. Astellia’s real-time monitoring and troubleshooting solutions cover all end-to-end networks from radio access to the core network. Through its product and service offerings, Astellia provides solutions for the automated optimization and geolocalisation of networks as well as data analysis “Big Data”. Astellia optimizes each link in the value chain of mobile operators: network operations, customer service, service center and marketing. Astellia collaborates with more than 120 operators in the world. Headquartered in France, Astellia has major operations in Spain and is also based in Canada, Lebanon, Morocco and South Africa.

Since 1985, Exfo has provided solutions for testing, monitoring and analyzing network data to communication service providers, network equipment manufacturers and Web services to provide appropriate technologies at each stage of the network lifecycle .