Perion Network To Buy Grow Mobile For Initial Price Of $17 Mln - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Perion Network Ltd. (PERI) announced Monday that it agreed to acquire Grow Mobile Inc, which provides a platform for mobile advertising that enables developers to buy, track, optimize, and scale user acquisition campaigns from a single dashboard.

Perion Network stated that the initial purchase price is $17 million, of which $10 million in cash and $7 million in equity which will be paid at closing. The total purchase price may reach up to $42 million, with an earn-out component that allows for an additional $25 million in cash and equity to be paid over the next 24 months, contingent upon achieving certain revenue and profit milestones.

Subject to customary closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close early in the third quarter. Perion noted that the acquisition will be funded from cash on hand. It anticipates the acquisition to be accretive to its 2014 financial results.

The company noted that Grow Mobile will become part of Perion Lightspeed, which was recently created to address the advertising needs of mobile app developers, and will enable Perion Lightspeed to provide a more comprehensive technical and platform solution for app developers.

Grow Mobile was founded less than two years ago, and is already profitable. This past year, it managed advertising campaigns in excess of $20 million with triple digit year-over-year top-line growth in the last quarter.

Lyall, AJ Yeakel and Minglei Xu (the other co-founders), as well as the entire Grow Mobile team, will remain with the Company. Lyall is the former Head of User Acquisition & Business Development at Storm8. Yeakel is the former head of Mobile Marketing and Revenue at Zynga and Xu was Chief Architect and co-founder of mobile gaming company Wild Needle, prior to being sold to Zynga. Together, they bring to Perion extensive experience and expertise in the mobile ad market.