November 2 (SeeNews) - Croatia-based Infobip Group, a global cloud communications platform company for customer engagement, said on Tuesday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to take over US VoIP provider Peerless Network, and has secured additional funding of $500 million (431 million euro).
The acquisition, Infobip’s fourth in under a year, enables the company to continue to grow its business in the US, in sync with Peerless Network’s strategy, Silvio Kutic, CEO of Infobip, said in a statement, without disclosing the value of the transaction.
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The deal is expected to complete upon receipt of regulatory approvals in 2022 and will be financed with a mix of Infobip shares and cash. Peerless Network management will roll parts of its holdings into Infobip under the agreement.
Launched in 2008, the Peerless Network portfolio delivers a suite of voice, UCaaS, SIP Trunking, Messaging, APIs, MS Teams integration, and other collaboration products and services. Covering 93% of the US population, it has more than 4,500 interconnections in 49 US states, processing 9 billion monthly minutes in over 200 markets.
The acquisition builds on Infobip’s ongoing investments and earlier acquisition of US messaging heavyweight OpenMarket, which closed in December 2020, according to the statement.
Infobip also said that its first-quarter revenue grew 55% on the year, a function of continued usage growth in its core business plus contribution from the $300 million acquisition of OpenMarket. Its other recent acquisitions were the developer Shift Conference franchise, purchased in April, and the world’s number one SMS firewall provider, Anam, in May 2021.
In September 2021, Infobip also secured, through direct loan placement, additional funding in the amount of $500 million led by funds managed by the Credit Group of Ares Management Corporation, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.
“The direct loan placement puts Infobip alongside an exclusive group of high growth, high value technology companies, which utilized the same structure,” the company said.
This is Infobip’s second funding round, following One Equity Partner’s 300 million euro investment in the second half of 2020, the company noted.
($=0.862 euro)