BRUSSELS, December 10, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Rentabiliweb is announcing its 100% acquisition of Vidalia and its subsidiaries in order to broaden its catalogue of monetization solutions and strengthen its activity in new businesses for exchanging electronic and monetary information, namely between automatons and machines.

Active on the French market since 2004, the Vidalia Group is an operator listed with ARCEP. It designs and hosts online services enabling remote access to information and interactive data exchange.

The company works in the areas of Business to Machine (B to M), multichannel customer relations, 0800 numbers (special numbers), interactive voice services and messages, IP telephony and SAAS services.

"Business-to-Machine" means the ability to enable electronic equipment to exchange data with other machines. Vidalia thus features a logistics platform enabling machine operators to "select" and adjust telecom traffic while optimizing revenues and maximizing the reliability and technical performance of connections. It offers optimized, highly secure, automated services for alarm systems (remote monitoring, elevators and more), and payment systems (transports, parking lots, motorways and more.)

Its clients include major key accounts such as Brinks, M6, Cofidis, Niele, Virgin Mobile, Presence Verte, Vitaris Response, Cegelec Secure, Mister Good Deal, Brandalley, Randstad, Rent-a-Car and others.

"Rentabiliweb has managed to establish its "one-stop" monetization services on the B-to-B market," explained Corinne Chatal, Vice President of Rentabiliweb Group. "With Vidalia, the Group is extending its services into the fast-growing B-to-M monetization market, in which billions of machines and sensors are and will in the future be interconnected via telecoms networks, without any human assistance."

"This acquisition rounds out a year of very strong growth for the Group, both organic and external", stated Jean-Baptiste Descroix-Vernier, Chairman of Rentabiliweb Group. "Rentabiliweb is focusing on tactical, scaled investments that are easy to incorporate and immediately create value for shareholders. By becoming a specialist in the "Business-to-Machine" field, Rentabiliweb is extending is monetization range and further enhancing the profitability of its B-to-B activities."

Vidalia: France's "Business-to-Machine" specialist

Vidalia is specialized in managing value-added incoming flows of information. Vidalia is namely a specialist in B-to-M that enables machines, equipment and objects to exchange data with other machines, people or information systems remotely and in real time.

Widely used in hospitals, remote monitoring, personal assistance, transports, parking lots and elevators, B-to-M technology is growing fast and has become a vital link in the customer relations chain.

According to forecasts, the B-to-M market will soon count several billion machines and hundreds of billions of objects that can potentially exchange data with one another. In 2004, there were 92 million units of B-to-M modules worldwide, all network technologies combined. According to Idate, this figure should reach 500 million by 2010. Experts forecast nearly 2 billion machines and 100 billion objects capable of exchanging data, mainly via RFID tags and sensors embedded in household appliances and industrial machines, by the end of 2013.

Identified synergies that create value

The uniting of the two entities will enable the development of high-level synergies and complementary product ranges, namely monetization services for professionals (B-to-B) and Interactive Voice Server (IVS) services.

Vidalia's organic growth is expected to accelerate in 2011 thanks namely to the very strong synergy created by this acquisition and to new markets for the consolidated company.

An immediately accretive operation for shareholders

The acquisition includes 100% of the capital of two companies, Vidalia Telecom and Vidalia Innovation.

In 2010, Vidalia Group is expected to reach sales of EUR 5.1 million and a normative EBIT of EUR 0.7 million.

The first phase of the operation features a cash payment of EUR 3.2 million, part of which is to be paid on the date of Acquisition, and part of which will be deferred to the 2011 financial year.

A second cash payment will be calculated based on the operating results for 2011 and will remain marginal compared to the base price.

The operation will be completely self-funded via the Group's cash reserves and its constant capacity to generate Free Cash Flow since it was founded. Rentabiliweb's fundamentals remain very strong, its cash reserves are very high, and it still has no debt. The Group is thus maintaining its ability to achieve its future ambitions, either through organic development or via external growth.

The operation is immediately accretive for shareholders thanks to the purchasing price and the fact that there is no raising of new capital, as well as to the commercial synergies and economies of scale between the two groups. The profitability of the B-to-B will thus be significantly strengthened.

When publishing its yearly results for 2010, the Group will specify its new scope and strategic ambitions, and will also make public to the market its target revenues for the year.

* The Normative EBIT is defined as the Vidalia Group's 12-month EBIT minus internal re-invoicing from Vidalia Group, namely management fees and salaries, which were revised by Rentabiliweb

Find this press release at: http://www.rentabiliweb.org/actualites/?p=2360