Monday, February 2, 2009

Nuance further extends Zi Corp. buyout offer

By Mass High Tech staff

Burlington-based Nuance Communications Inc. has once again extended its offer to buy all outstanding common shares of Canada’s Zi Corp., a mobile software maker, until Feb. 13. The offer still stands at 40 cents per common share, or about $20 million. The announcement from Nuance (Nasdaq: NUAN) was made Friday, the most recent deadline for Zi (Nasdaq: ZICA) shareholders to decide on the offer.

The offer represents a 25 percent premium over Zi’s closing price of stock on Aug. 13, when Zi announced Nuance’s first acquisition offer. That original offer, a cash tender proposal of $40.4 million or 80 cents per share, represented a 150 percent premium over the Aug. 13 closing stock price.

The two companies share a history of contentious entanglement. After Zi rejected Nuance’s initial offer in August, Nuance followed up with a lawsuit accusing Zi of infringing Nuance patents with the Canadian company's Qix and eZiText products.

Burlington-based Nuance was founded in 1992 as Visioneer Inc. and provides speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers, including the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software application. Nuance reported a net loss for fiscal 2008 of $30 million on revenue of $868 million.

An earlier online version of this article incorrectly characterized the legal dispute between Nuance and Zi. In August, Nuance sued Zi, alleging patent infringement.