Apis Capital Management has submitted an all-cash offer to Veritone’s board of directors to acquire all outstanding shares, in a deal worth around $198m.
The deal is worth $10.26 per share and represents a 93 per cent premium on the closing price of the Veritone stock on 4 December, when the private proposal was initially made. It is an 82 per cent premium over the closing price on 7 December, which was the last trading day before the announcement.
Apis is expecting the deal to be approved and completed by March 2019. The firm has conducted discussions with Veritone to discuss merits and potential terms of the deal; however, Veritone has stalled in moving forward.
Following the cloase of the deal, Apis will look to boost synergy with its portfolio of AI and machine learning investments, in hope of opening Veritone to new technology opportunities.
Apis Capital Management managing partner Edgar Radjabli said, “We have determined it is necessary to take our offer directly to Veritone stockholders in order to deliver significant value to them as expeditiously as possible.
“This compelling transaction would deliver immediate liquidity to Veritone stockholders, at a premium to Veritone’s prospects as a standalone company. Veritone shareholders have seen the management of the company unable to deliver value since its IPO, nor has management been able to provide a compelling vision for a turnaround in the company’s business, and we believe our proposal represents the best possible outcome.”
New York and Florida investment bank Shift4 Capital is acting as the financial advisor to Apis for the deal.
Veritone is an operating system for artificial intelligence which supports compliance, legal, government and media operations. Financial services can implement Veritone to improve their communication monitoring and meet the various compliance requirements of this.
The AI solution is able to monitor voice, video and text-based communications to identify any potential compliance risks in near real-time, such as fraud, market manipulation, insider-trading and collusion. Alongside this, it is also able to automatically transcribe speech-to-text, translate, identify faces and objects, and understand accents and slang.
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