LU buying everything except COMS LOL!
Lucent To Buy Xedia For About $246 Million
In Stock
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news), the
No. 1 telecommunications equipment maker, Friday furthered its push into the
data networking market with an agreement to purchase privately held Xedia
Corp. for about $246 million in stock.
Acton, Mass.-based Xedia makes routers for so-called virtual private networking services. These
allow companies to transmit information across a secure location on the Internet.
Xedia's products will strengthen Lucent's ability to provide data networking products for
corporations, an area where it had previously acknowledged some weakness.
``This acquisition fills an important space in our enterprise data networking portfolio with
award-winning products,' said Curtis Sanford, president of Lucent's InterNetworking Systems
group.
Xedia's ``routing products will give Lucent a key advantage at the edge of the campus network,
where corporations and service providers are coming together to deliver next-generation services,
such as IP (Internet Protocol) Virtual Private Networks,' Sanford said.
Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent said it will buy Xedia for about 3.86 million shares of Lucent
common stock or about $246 million. The deal is expected to close in the fiscal quarter ending Dec.
31. The deal will not affect Lucent's earnings in fiscal 2000.
Xedia's customers includes phone and Internet companies such as MCI WorldCom Inc.
(Nasdaq:WCOM - news), PSINet, Concentric Network Corp. and Sprint Corp. (NYSE:FON -
news) Xedia also has significant relationships with Verio Inc. (Nasdaq:VRIO - news) and Copper
Mountain Networks Inc. (Nasdaq:CMTN - news)
Lucent said Xedia's 90 employees will continue to be located in Acton, Mass. Xedia Chairman
Ashley Stephenson will become vice president and chief technology officer of Lucent's Enterprise
WAN (wide area network) Systems group.
The deal continues Lucent's aggressive acquisition spree as it tries to expand beyond its core
business of providing equipment for phone companies.
Earlier this week, Lucent said it would buy communications consulting firm International Network
Services (Nasdaq:INSS - news) for $3.7 billion.
Lucent also recently closed its acquisitions of data networking company Ascend Communications
Inc., as well as Mosaix Inc., which provides customer service management software, and data
networking company Nexabit Networks. It recently agreed to buy fiber optics maker SpecTran
Corp. |
