Robin Wauters reported on TechCrunch that this morning Oracle announced it has acquired RightNow – both companies are listed on NASDAQ – for $43 per share or roughly $1.5 billion net of RightNow’s cash and debt. With the acquisition, Oracle is adding a robust cloud-based customer service offering (see graph below) to its own Public Cloud solution – more info on that here. RightNow’s share price closed at $35.96 last week, so the deal represents a premium of roughly 20 percent on its closing price on Friday the 21st of October.
RightNow’s solutions help companies handle customer interactions across a multitude of channels, including call and contact centers, the Web and social networks.
Its products are used by nearly 2,000 organizations across the globe, the company says.
Founded in 1997, RightNow went public in 2004. The company boasted a market cap of $1.2 billion at market close last week.
The acquisition by Oracle is expected to close later this year or in early 2012. As usual, the transaction is subject to a number of things, including RightNow stockholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Oracle has closed 6 acquisitions this year. While its takeovers of RightNow and Endeca are pending, the company has completed the purchases of Datanomic, FatWire, Inquira, Ndevr, Ksplice and Pillar Data Systems in 2011 alone.
