Nice Systems Announces Plans to Acquire Actimize

By announcing a definitive agreement to acquire Actimize, NICE Systems is pioneering convergence of Real-Time transaction and interaction analytics solutions.

It will become the world’s first company to offer a cross-channel solution for enterprises analyzing data from contact centers, electronic transactions, web, emails, market data, and more. NICE believes this alliance will help them leverage its leadership in financial services contact centers and trading floors, and it expects the deal to contribute $55 to $60 million, non-GAAP revenues in 2008.

As a leader in the financial services market, today NICE solutions captures and analyzes hundreds of millions of voice, web, email and other interactions daily. Its customers include the world’s top banks, brokerages, and thousands of financial institutions worldwide, which seek to improve compliance, enterprise performance, and customer loyalty.

Today, Actimize solutions are analyzing close to one billion transactions daily at the world’s top banks and brokerage firms, which are seeking to improve compliance, fraud prevention, and anti-money laundering. Leveraging on these synergies, NICE and Actimize will focus initially on the financial services industry to offer the first solution in the world which provides real-time transaction and interaction analytics.

NICE has always looked to generate powerful synergies. In fact, its partners include International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Siemens (SI), Cisco (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), and a growing list of the world’s biggest players.

With an ever-increasing concern in the financial markets about fraud, money laundering, and brokerage compliance, the business of Actimize has been growing strongly. Pairing that with NICE’s 32% year-over-year quarterly revenue growth, and $400+ million annual revenue stream, the deal looks picture perfect. The stock is now trading about 10% off its all-time high of about 40.

The excitement of this news was already getting built into the stock price a few weeks ago when rumors started spreading about the deal. So don’t look to get in to make a quick buck. If you see the future of this industry for all its great potential, though, owning a few shares of this company could make a real nice addition to your long-term portfolio.

Disclosure: The author’s fund is currently long NICE as of July 5, 2007, but does not own any of the other companies listed above.

NICE 1-yr chart: