Sep 25, 2001 : VeriSign to Acquire Illuminet

📅 September 25, 2001 - VeriSign, Inc. (verisign.com), a leading provider ofdigital trust services, last night announced a definitive agreement toacquire publicly traded Illuminet Holdings, Inc. (illuminet.com) of Olympia,Washington. Illuminet is a leading provider of intelligent network andsignaling services to communications carriers.

Illuminet's business will expand VeriSign's digital trust servicesportfolio, which includes Web identity, authentication and payment services.These services are supported by an infrastructure relied upon to conductover five billion domain name system look-ups, 100 million database queries,and millions of secure commerce and communications transactions.
"Through this combination, service providers and enterprises will have theopportunity to use VeriSign's highly scalable data and voice infrastructureto deliver new services and to improve the speed and efficiency of theircurrent offerings," said Stratton Sclavos, president and CEO of VeriSign."Just as we created a trusted digital environment with our Internet-basedservices, this new integrated data-voice infrastructure will serve as thefoundation for new types of services for the highly anticipatednext-generation networks."
VeriSign will use its global infrastructure to accelerate the introductionof new services for Illuminet's customers, such as secure short messaging,local number portability and Voice Over IP bridging. Illuminet will alsoenable VeriSign to deliver data-voice offerings such as WebNum, a navigationservice that enables wireless phones to link specific numbers directly toInternet domain names; services using ENUM, which combines phone numbers anddomain names to create one contact point for businesses and individuals; anda Global Voice Registry service, which enables callers to reach a businesssimply by speaking the company's name.
Under the terms of the agreement, VeriSign will exchange 0.93 shares oroptions of VeriSign common stock for each outstanding share and option ofIlluminet and will assume Illuminet's outstanding employee stock options.This will result in VeriSign issuing approximately 30.4 million shares forall issued and outstanding shares (including stock options) of Illuminet.
Based on VeriSign's closing stock price of $38.30 per share on Sept. 21,2001, this exchange ratio values the transaction at approximately $1.2billion. This acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase transactionand is expected to be completed late in the fourth quarter of 2001 or earlyin the first quarter of 2002. The acquisition has been approved by the boardof directors of each company and is subject to various closing conditions,including government approvals and consent by the stockholders of Illuminet.
Illuminet supports telecommunications networks used to make wireless calls,long-distance calls and Internet connections by ensuring that carriers canconnect to each other and also enabling advanced calling features such ascaller identification and local number portability.
In the second quarter of 2001, Illuminet reported revenues of $47.2 million.It has approximately 500 employees. It is based in Olympia, Washington andalso has a significant presence in Overland Park, Kansas and in Dallas,Texas. Operations will continue in those areas.