Voice and data communications equipment provider Network Equipment Technologies (News - Alert), Inc. (NET) on Friday announced it agreed to acquire VoIP solutions provider Quintum (News - Alert) Technologies Inc. for $41 million.  

 

Under the agreement, NET (News - Alert) will buy all the outstanding shares of Quintum for a total equity value of $41 million, inclusive of $20.5 million in cash and $20.5 million in NET stock.

Quintum’s VoIP access switching and gateway products are distributed in more than 50 countries through independent resellers and have been successfully deployed in both enterprise and service-provider networks globally.

According to a press release, the number of NET shares to be issued to Quintum shareholders would be determined five trading days prior to the transaction closing. NET would also assume nearly $2.0 million in debt currently on Quintum's balance sheet, which it intends to pay off in full upon the transaction closing.

In addition, NET has committed to issue to Quintum employees a number of stock options having an approximate Black Scholes valuation of at least $3 million. NET expects the deal to close during its third fiscal quarter, ending December 28, 2007.

 Founded in 1998, Quintum is headquartered in Eatontown, NJ with additional offices in Schaumberg, IL; Hong Kong, Taipei and Shanghai. Upon completion of the transaction, Quintum will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of NET. Its products will continue to be sold under the Quintum brand through its existing channels.

NET President and CEO C. Nicholas Keating, Jr. remarked, “The acquisition of Quintum reflects NET’s strategy to broaden our VoIP product solutions. This will add further scale to our growing VoIP business and put us in a better position to address enterprise and government customer requirements.”

Cheng T. Chen, CEO and Co-Founder of Quintum Technologies, commented, “Since inception, Quintum’s focus has been to offer a logical migration path to a converged network infrastructure for enterprises and for next-generation service providers. We’ve developed a complete line of intelligent access and switching solutions. Combining with NET provides Quintum with access to significantly greater resources to better address and support our customers’ and partners’ needs, both today and in the future.”


Narayan Bhat is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more Bhat’s articles, please visit his TMCnet columnist page.