American Virtual Cloud Technologies, and Ribbon Communications announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for AVCtechnologies to acquire Kandy Communications, an industry-leading proprietary, multi-tenant, highly scalable cloud communications platform, from Ribbon, in an all-stock transaction.
The proposed acquisition combines AVCtechnologies’ 30+ years of experience delivering exceptional white-glove customer service to enterprise customers across a range of managed IT solutions with Kandy’s pure-play, industry-leading, proprietary UCaaS, CPaaS, and CCaaS platform to provide a best-in-class, end-to-end communication experience for channel partners, their customers and end users.
“We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Kandy, which is a major step in strengthening our ability to deliver a comprehensive set of cloud solutions and managed services offerings to our customers,” said AVCtechnologies CEO Darrell J. Mays. “We are extremely fortunate to be able to acquire Kandy, which has built one of the most impressive and advanced cloud communication platforms in the world.”
“This acquisition significantly accelerates our growth strategy and vision to become a leading provider in the large and fast-growing cloud communications industry while increasing our penetration into global medium-sized and large enterprise clients,” added Graham McGonigal, AVCtechnologies Chief Operating Officer.
Founded in 2014, Kandy is a global provider of complex deployments of UCaaS, CPaaS, and CCaaS for mid-market and enterprise customers across its powerful, proprietary multi-tenant, highly scalable cloud platform. The Kandy platform also includes pre-built customer engagement tools, based on WebRTC technology, known as Kandy Wrappers, and provides white-labeled services to a variety of customers including communications service providers and systems integrators.
Kandy was created to help enterprise adopt the cloud, embrace agile innovation and enable programmable communications to save cost, increase productivity, and grow revenues. With Kandy, communication becomes more immediate and contextual resulting in better business outcomes.
Kandy has built a comprehensive roster of globally recognized customers, including AT&T, City of Los Angeles, IBM, and Etisalat (the largest telecom provider in the UAE).
Bruce McClelland, Ribbon’s CEO, stated “We are extremely impressed with the tremendous depth of talent and vision of the AVCtechnologies’ management team and believe that with the addition of the talented and innovative Kandy team, the company will continue to thrive and flourish. We expect the combination of the two entities to generate significant growth and value, and we are excited to be a shareholder of the combined company.”
Upon closing, the senior leadership team of Kandy and its personnel, composed of talented business and technology professionals, are expected to join AVCtechnologies.
Under the agreement, AVCtechnologies will issue thirteen million shares of its common stock to Ribbon Communications. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2020 and is subject to standard regulatory review and receipt of the approval of AVCtechnologies’ stockholders, AVCtechnologies’ completion of an equity offering, as well as other customary closing conditions.
Truist Securities, Inc. is serving as sole financial advisor and Greenberg Traurig LLP is serving as legal counsel to AVCtechnologies. Q Advisors is serving as sole financial advisor and Latham & Watkins LLP is serving as legal counsel to Ribbon.
About American Virtual Cloud Technologies, Inc.
AVCtechnologies makes comprehensive and innovative cloud-based UCaaS, Cybersecurity, and IT solutions simple for over 900 enterprise customers, including 350+ managed service clients. Our mission is to be your single destination partner for the white-glove delivery of reliable and secure managed cloud services, hardware, and software.
For more information, visit avctechnologies.com.
About Kandy
Kandy, a division of Ribbon, is a cloud-based, real-time communications platform offering proprietary UCaaS, CPaaS, and CCaaS capabilities. Kandy enables service providers, enterprises, software vendors, systems integrators, partners and developers to enrich their applications and services with real-time contextual communications, providing a more engaging user experience. With Kandy, companies of all sizes and types can quickly embed real-time communications capabilities into their existing applications and business processes.
For more information visit kandy.io.
About Ribbon
Ribbon Communications (Nasdaq: RBBN), which recently merged with ECI Telecom Group, delivers global communications software and network solutions to service providers, enterprises and critical infrastructure sectors. We engage deeply with our customers, helping them modernize their networks for improved competitive positioning and business outcomes in today’s smart, always-on and data-hungry world. Our innovative, end-to-end solutions portfolio delivers unparalleled scale, performance, and agility, including core to edge IP solutions, leading-edge software security and analytics tools, as well as packet and optical networking leveraging ECI’s Elastic Network technology.
To learn more about Ribbon visit rbbn.com.
For more information about our Elastic Network technology packet-optical portfolio visit ecitele.com.