BILLERICA, Mass. - Viisage today announced that it has completed the transaction for acquiring Nashville, Tenn.-based Integrated Biometric Technology (IBT) announced in October 2005. The IBT acquisition is part of a strategic growth plan with L-1 Investment Partners to establish Viisage as the pre-eminent provider of identity software and services. Specifically, the proprietary IBT fingerprint technology and background screening solutions add an important multi-modal recognition capability to the Viisage portfolio. IBT solutions will be offered as part of the Viisage portfolio for end-to-end protection and security of personal identities.
Following the approval today by Viisage stockholders of the issuance of $100 million in Viisage common stock to L-1 Investment Partners, LLC (see separate release), full ownership of IBT was transferred from L-1 to Viisage. Specifically, Viisage acquired from IBT all outstanding IBT stock for five million newly-issued shares of pre-reverse split Viisage common stock (two million post split) and paid L-1 $35 million in cash. This transaction is expected to produce revenue in the $30 to $35 million range and be accretive in 2006.
"Many government, civil, and commercial organizations are moving to a more integrated approach for background checks and screening," said Bernard Bailey, president and CEO of Viisage. "With the addition of IBT, Viisage has further enhanced our ability to be a leading provider of multi-modal identity solutions for face and finger. Our stakeholders also benefit from this transaction with an even broader base of recurring revenue and greater stability for their investment."
IBT will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Viisage. The Company does not anticipate any reductions in staff or any changes in the physical location of employees or facilities.
"We believe that the combination of IBT fingerprinting solutions with Viisage authentication, proofing and credentialing products offers the best method for verifying an individual identity prior to granting privileges," said Charles Carroll, president and CEO of IBT. "We are very happy to be a part of this larger vision of a fully integrated and secure process for protecting and securing identities within governments and commercial enterprises."
The IBT and Viisage solutions help organizations to comply with mandates outlined by federal security regulations, such as the US PATRIOT Act requirement that commercial drivers transporting hazardous materials must undergo background screening. Since 2004, IBT has deployed a network of electronic fingerprint capture devices for the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to process applicants for hazardous materials transportation licenses, which now spans 34 states.
Additional IBT customers include state and local governments, the Florida Department of Education and three of the largest U.S. banks.
The technologies serve the needs of state, local and federal agencies in areas such as local civil identification, state and federal criminal identification and law enforcement, and international border management.
For private sector organizations in areas such as banking, education and security, the benefits of multi-modal finger and face recognition technologies from Viisage and IBT range from more thorough background screening for new job applicants to better protection of individuals from possible online identity theft.
