Lexmark International to buy Swedish software company Readsoft

US laser printer and imaging software company Lexmark International today struck a deal to buy Swedish software company Readsoft AB for 1.2 billion crowns ($183 million) in cash.

Lexmark is offering $6.11 in cash for each Series A and Series B share of ReadSoft, a 117.6 per cent premium over the Helsingborg, Sweden-based company's Monday closing price.

Readsoft founders, Lars Appelstal and Jan Andersson, holding 22.9 per cent of shares and 41.5 per cent of the votes in ReadSoft, have agreed to the deal.

Founded in 1991, ReadSoft is a leading global provider of software solutions that automate business processes, both on premise and in the cloud, and is recognised in the industry for its strong integrations with leading ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle.

Its software captures, classifies, sorts and routes both hard copy and digital business documents, provides approval workflows, and automatically extracts and verifies relevant data before depositing it into a customer's systems of record.

The company has over 12,000 customers worldwide, operates in 70 countries, has approximately 625 employees, and had 2013 revenue of $1172 million.

ReadSoft also has many enterprise customers diversified across multiple industries, including manufacturing, retail, banking and insurance, and the public sector. Some of its enterprise customers include BASF, Siemens, Bosch, HSBC Bank, ING, Lego and John Deere. 

Post closing, expected in the second quarter of 2014, ReadSoft will be combined with Lexmark's Perceptive Software.

"The combination of ReadSoft and Perceptive Software will enhance our ability to create solutions that manage the ever-expanding forms of content, from traditional hard copy documents to mobile video and audio in today's digital business environment,'' said, Paul Rooke, Lexmark chairman and CEO.

Formed in 1991 when IBM divested its printer and printer supply operations to private equity firm Clayton & Dubilier & Rice, Lexmark became a publicly traded company in 1995.

The Kentucky-based company has since grown and diversified into imaging software business through strategic acquisitions, including the 2010 purchase of Perceptive Software.

Apart from manufacturing hardware under its own name, Lexmark, which had 2012 revenues of $3.8 billion, is also an original equipment manufacturer of printers for other major companies, such as Dell and IBM InfoPrint.

The company, which has more than 13,000 employees worldwide, has its research and development offices in Colorado, Kansas, Philippines, and India.