Wheelings & Dealings: Momentum Telecom Agrees to Pay $28.7 million for Alteva Merger

By Frank Griffin
TMCnet Contributing Writer

The Unified Communications (News - Alert) as a Service (UCaaS) market is forecast to grow to $24.88 billion by 2020, according to a MarketsandMarkets projection. This is making UCaaS service providers great acquisition targets by companies looking to increase their presence in this segment. Momentum (News - Alert) Telecom, a VoIP, broadband services and unified communications provider, has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Alteva, Inc., provider of hosted UCaaS.

According to Momentum, it will be paying a total equity price of $28.7 million for the merger with Alteva (News - Alert). It is paying a premium of 31 percent based on the closing price of Alteva’s stock on September 2, 2015 and 38 percent based on Alteva’s 20-day average price.

Once the deal is finalized, the combined resources of both companies will deliver a best-in-class UC services. This will increase the reach of the sales, as well as marketing initiatives by strengthening their capacity to support new and existing customers, and increase Momentum Telecom’s number of users to more than a quarter million.

“The combined strengths of these two companies further enhance Momentum Telecom as a market leader in the VOIP and unified communications industry. Alteva shares our dedication to providing top-notch reliability and service to its customers,” said Bill Fox, President and Chief Executive Officer of Momentum Telecom.

The Alteva UCaaS platform is designed to improve business productivity and efficiency by integrating and optimizing best-in-class, cloud-based technologies and business applications to deliver comprehensive voice, video and collaboration service for the office and mobile workforce.

The companies Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) is a service that integrates telephony (IP voice) with real-time communication applications such as instant messaging (chat), presence, video conferencing, data sharing, whiteboards, call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging (voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax).

“As the industry grows, so does the competitive landscape. The control of selling expenses and the achievement of operating efficiencies depend on scale. Momentum Telecom and Alteva together constitute the most viable solution toward achieving these goals and benefitting our employees, customer and partners,” said Brian J. Kelley, Chief Executive Officer of Alteva.