Microsoft has entered into a definitive agreement with Nuance Communications to acquire the latter in an all-cash transaction valued at $19.7bn inclusive of Nuance’s net debt. Microsoft will be paying $56/share of Nuance that reflects a 23% premium to the closing price of Nuance shares on April 9. Nuance is a cloud and AI software company that provides healthcare solutions and is a leading provider of conversational AI and cloud-based clinical intelligence. The company also provides AI expertise and customer engagement solutions across interactive voice response, virtual assistants and digital and biometric solutions. Nuance’s Healthcare Cloud revenue has seen a growth of 37% YoY in 2020 as it is the preferred choice of 55% of the physicians and 75% of radiologists in the US. The takeover will help Microsoft accelerate its cloud offerings and add to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare introduced last year and could result in doubling Microsoft’s total addressable market (TAM) to ~$500bn. Mark Benjamin, CEO of Nuance said, “We believe the combination of our two companies will, over the long term, accelerate innovation and value as we intensify our industry focus at scale to provide even better outcomes for our customers.” Goldman Sachs and Evercor are the financial advisor to Microsoft and Nuance respectively for the deal.
Microsoft’s 3.7% 2046s and 2.525% 2050s were down 0.47 and 0.7 points to trade at 113.5 and 92.04 respectively.
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