Lexington, KY - Lexmark International has signed an agreement to acquire Germany-based software developer Saperion for a cash purchase price of approximately $72 million. Once the sale is complete, Saperion will report to Lexmark-owned Perceptive Software.
The purchase is another in a line of acquisitions aimed at transitioning Lexmark from a company that makes printers to a document management company, leaning heavily on software to store and deliver documents without the use of paper except when necessary.
In addition to having a multilingual structure, Saperion's platform can integrate with all major business software known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) as well as email and document management systems. Saperion has also developed cloud-based and mobile solutions to provide access to content, even when those trying to access documents are away from their offices.
Saperion has a base of customers consisting of medium-sized companies as well as global accounts, such as Schindler, E.ON (the former owners of Kentucky Utilities), Fleurop, Henkel, Lufthansa, Vodafone, Daimler and Siemen, according to a release from Lexmark.
"Lexmark continues to deepen and expand its content and process capabilities and solutions, which in turn improves our ability to help our customers manage their unstructured information challenges," Lexmark's chairman and chief executive officer Paul Rooke said in the release.
Lexmark stated that Tuesday’s announcement falls in line with the company’s plans “to pursue acquisitions that support growth and increase software and solutions capabilities, while returning more than 50 percent of free cash flow to shareholders, on average, through quarterly dividends and share repurchases.”
This announcement follows March acquisitions of San Francisco-based Twistage and Seattle-based AccessVia, for a combined investment of approximately $31.5 million, and the January purchase of Acuo Technologies, LLC, a Minneapolis-based company that specializes in streamlining health-care imaging onto one system, for approximately $45 million in cash.