Board of Directors Approves CA/Sterling Acquisition
Computer Associates International Inc. has entered an agreement to acquire Sterling Software Inc. in a $4 billion stock-for-stock transaction. Both Boards of Directors have unanimously approved this move. The acquisition is expected to be accretive to CA's earnings per share, excluding any one-time research and development charge and amortization of acquisition intangibles, and is subject to certain closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. The acquisition will be accounted for using the purchase method.
Under terms of the agreement, a subsidiary of CA will commence an offer to exchange 0.5634 shares of CA stock for each outstanding Sterling share. The exchange ratio is subject to a collar. If the average trading price of CA stock for the designated period prior to the closing of the offer is greater than $77.12, the exchange ratio will be reduced so that each Sterling share tendered in the offer would be exchanged for $43.45 worth of CA stock. If the average trading price of CA shares for the period is less than $63.10, the exchange ratio will be increased so that each Sterling share tendered in the offer would be exchanged for $35.55 worth of CA stock. In this case, CA may elect to reduce the exchange ratio and make up the difference in cash and or stock.
The tender offer will be followed by a back-end merger on the same terms of those in the offer. The offer will be subject to customary closing conditions, including that at least a majority of Sterling's outstanding shares has been tendered and antitrust clearance obtained.
Sterling Software solutions are deployed at more than 20,000 customer sites worldwide -- including 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies -- to create, control, automate and manage both traditional and eBusiness systems. Sterling Software's portal technology provides access to data stored in corporate databases, in the same way that Internet content portals provide access to the wealth of content on the Web.
CA plans to enhance Sterling Software products with information visualization, Neugents neural network technology and infrastructure management solutions. In particular, the combination of Sterling Software's COOL suite and CA's Jasmine ii information infrastructure will deliver the most sophisticated and personalized enterprise application integration solution on the market. The merger will create the industry's largest supplier of storage management technology, with solutions that cover the entire enterprise from OS/390 and distributed systems to desktops and even laptops.
Sterling Software clients and partners will be invited to attend CA-World, CA's annual user conference from April 9-14 in New Orleans, in place of the Sterling Software Worldwide Customer Conference. CA also intends to publish papers on product development strategies and directions shortly after completion of the acquisition.
Founded in 1981, Sterling Software reported $807 million in revenues in fiscal 1999. The company has recorded 45 consecutive quarters of revenue and earnings per share growth.
Sterling Software is a leading provider of software and services for the application development, business intelligence, information management, storage management, network management, VM systems management and federal systems markets. The company is one of the 20 largest independent software companies in the world. Headquartered in Dallas, Sterling Software has a worldwide installed base of more than 20,000 customer sites and 3,800 employees in 90 offices worldwide.
For more information, visit www.ca.com or www.sterling.com.