Avocent buys LANDesk

IT infrastructure services company Avocent Corp. has acquired LANDesk Group Ltd. for $416 million in a cash and stock transaction. Avocent expects to complete the acquisition within 75 days.

The agreement calls for Avocent of Huntsville, Ala., to pay LANDesk of Salt Lake City $200 million in cash, $200 million in stock and $16 million in assumed options, Avocent said in a statement announcing the deal.

The cost of the purchase could increase another $60 million if LANDesk meets certain financial targets. Details of those conditions were not made available.

LANDesk is the second acquisition for Avocent this year. In January, the company purchased Cyclades Corp. of Fremont, Calif., for $90 million. The pair of acquisitions positions Avocent to offer a solutions suite that will give IT managers full control of all their hardware and software assets, the company said.

LANDesk, which will keep its name, achieved earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, of $7 million on revenue of $83.7 million in fiscal 2005. Slightly more than half of the company's 2005 sales came in North America, the rest were in Europe, Japan, China and Latin America.

LANDesk became a privately held company in 2002, when it was spun out of Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif. The company has about 500 employees and focuses on centralized management and protection of enterprise IT assets.

Avocent has roughly 940 employees and had annual revenue of $370 million in fiscal 2005, according to Hoover's Online of Austin, Texas.