Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada – Sierra Wireless Inc. has completed the sale of most of its AirCard® assets and operations to NETGEAR® Inc. for $138 million in cash plus approximately $5.9 million in assumed liabilities.
Sierra Wireless intends to use a substantial portion of the net proceeds from the transaction to continue its acquisition strategy in the M2M market. It aims to accelerate revenue and earnings growth by strengthening its leadership in existing markets and expanding its position in the M2M value chain. In addition, Sierra Wireless has obtained the approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange for a Normal Course Issuer Bid (NCIB) to re-purchase shares of the company and has commenced purchases under this programme.
Sierra Wireless’s retained business includes its AirPrime™ embedded wireless modules, AirLink® intelligent gateways, and AirVantage™ M2M cloud product lines.
“Sierra Wireless is now an M2M and connected device pure play, focused on providing innovative device-to-cloud solutions that enable customers across a broad range of markets to connect to the ‘Internet of Things’,” said Jason Cohenour, President and CEO of Sierra Wireless. “This transaction provides significant financial capacity to accelerate our growth in M2M – a market in which we are the world leader today, with the industry’s broadest product lineup, and an extensive, blue-chip customer base.”
Sierra Wireless (NASDAQ: SWIR) (TSX: SW) provides products and solutions for connected devices and M2M communications over cellular networks and offers wireless technology to equipment manufacturers, wireless service providers, enterprises and government organisations around the world.
