Kofax Portfolio Expands With $34.7M Buy Of German E-Signature Software Seller

Technology solution provider Kofax continued growing its portfolio of document-capture solutions in a bid to broaden its footprint across the entire life cycle of content.

The Irvine, Calif.-based company's $34.7 million cash purchase of Germany-based electronic signature and fraud verification software company Softpro also includes an additional $3.5 million in payments over the next two years if certain terms and conditions are met. The deal closed Monday.

"[Softpro's] software offers enhanced capabilities to Kofax customers who want to embed it within their smart process applications, thus making the First Mile of customer interactions even smarter," Kofax CEO Reynolds C. Bish said in a statement.

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Softpro brings 80 workers -- all of whom are expected to stay with the company -- to Kofax, along with a business that saw $13.3 million in total revenue and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $1 million last year.

Softpro counts a number of banks as customers, including Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. It also works with retailers and government agencies.

Kofax Platinum Partner Hershey Technologies President Neal Fischer sees big benefits to the San Diego-based company's client base as a result of the deal.

"Hershey Technologies has numerous clients that face challenges with the costs of managing high-valued, paper-based processing applications, such as contracts, invoice approval and employee onboarding, that wish to streamline these processes," Fischer told CRN. "Use of [the] Softpro e-signature offering will expand our service portfolio using Kofax TotalAgility web e-forms."

The combined offerings will create greater efficiencies, Fischer said, by allowing for the design of form-based workflow processes that can then be signed electronically perhaps via a mobile device.

The Softpro deals follows a number of buys for Kofax in recent years.

It paid $13.5 million in cash for business intelligence and analytics software developer Altosoft in March of last year. That deal was followed up a few months later in July when it bought data integration software provider Kapow Technologies Holdings for an initial $47.5 million, along with additional payments at later dates.

The Softpro deal is the latest strategic buy for the company that's in line with the direction it's moving toward, said Scott Swidersky, CEO of Washington D.C.-based Kofax Platinum partner Quality Associates.

"Kofax has been the market leader in the capture space and, really, within the last four years they have made a very strong play to expand the role of Kofax in the life cycle of content in general," Swidersky told CRN. "I think it's a great fit for them. The more that Kofax moves towards workflow and forms, eventually they're either going to have to partner with an electronic-signature verification company or, like in this case, they just decided to acquire Softpro."

The Softpro deal, disclosed Tuesday, came the same day Kofax reported in a separate announcement results for its quarter ended June 30.

The company beat street expectations on its revenue performance for the June quarter with sales up 3 percent from a year earlier to $80.6 million. Wall Street analysts, on average, expected revenue of $79.47 million.

Kofax reported adjusted EBITDA for the June quarter, down 38.9 percent from the year-ago period to $13.4 million.

The company guided adjusted revenue results for the current year ended June 30, 2015, to be in the range of $343 million to $351 million, beating the analyst projection of $316.24 million.

Kofax shares were trading down less than 1 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday to $7.77 for a market value of $669.77 million.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 3, 2014