One Voice Technologies, Inc. (fka OVOE)

[Ugo22]

ONEV command and control is in place with Intel on healthcare initiatives... And now this... A positive event not a negative... I think ONEV is worth much more in the long run...

Does not sound like NUAN bought a speech engine.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/081001/20081001005599.html?.v=1

a business unit of Royal Philips Electronics (AEX: PHI, NYSE: PHG) and leader in speech recognition solutions, especially in the European healthcare market. With the combined resources of Nuance and PSRS, Nuance significantly enhances its ability to deliver innovative, speech-driven clinical documentation and communication solutions to healthcare organizations throughout Europe.
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Through this transaction, Nuance expands upon its mission to transform the way healthcare organizations document patient care. In recent years, Nuance’s healthcare solutions have become the industry standard for automating clinical documentation in North America, targeting the estimated $10 billion spent annually for medical transcription alone. The opportunity for automated documentation solutions is also significant in Europe, where an estimated $2 billion is spent each year for manually processing clinical information and where governments have made substantial investments to digitize healthcare systems, such as the $24 billion applied to the National Health Service National Programme for IT in England.

“Nuance has been disciplined and focused in our pursuit of the healthcare opportunity in North America, a strategy that has paid dividends both in our rapid growth and the broad adoption of our solutions,” said Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO at Nuance. “PSRS provides a solid foundation of customers, partners and European language-solutions as we expand our business in Europe and enable broader geographical leverage for Nuance’s portfolio of healthcare products and services.”

Under terms of the agreement, consideration for the transaction is 66 million Euro, or approximately $96.1 million. Consideration comprised a cash payment of 21.7 million Euro on September 26, 2008, and a deferred payment of 44.3 million Euro to be paid in cash on September 21, 2009. Nuance expects the acquisition in fiscal 2009 to add between $36 million and $39 million in GAAP revenue; $37 million and $40 million in non-GAAP revenue after adjusting for revenue lost to purchase accounting; GAAP earnings between $0.00 and $0.01 per share; and non-GAAP earnings between $0.02 and $0.03 per share. See “Discussion of non-GAAP Financial Measures” below for further information.

“Nuance’s strong European operational performance this quarter and fiscal year provide motivation for the acquisition of PSRS,” commented Tom Beaudoin, CFO at Nuance. “In addition, our sustained performance of positive cash flows in the fourth quarter and projected cash flows in fiscal year 2009 give us confidence in funding this acquisition with cash.”

Beaudoin continued: “We anticipate that our Healthcare business will now deliver worldwide revenues in excess of $410 million in fiscal year 2009. Operating margins in our healthcare business should be up sharply, above the corporate average for the full fiscal year, as we realize the synergies from fully integrating PSRS and leverage the operational momentum in our North American healthcare business.”

Headquartered in Vienna, Austria, PSRS has proven itself a market leader in Europe with consistent customer growth and partner relationship expansion. PSRS offers speech recognition solutions in 25 languages, the most comprehensive language portfolio in healthcare, to meet virtually all medical documentation requirements regardless of location, medical vocabulary or healthcare provider’s native language. Through more than 100 integration partners worldwide, PSRS solutions can be used with healthcare IT applications found in hospitals, practices and other healthcare organizations, as well with medical transcription platforms. In addition, recent acquisitions in both Germany and Spain have further broadened its operations and capabilities for the European healthcare market.

“With multiple industry initiatives and significant government investment toward healthcare information standardization, Europe offers a large and growing market for innovative technology that improves provider productivity and the clinical documentation process,” said Marcel Wassink, CEO of Philips Speech Recognition Solutions. “Together with Nuance and our broad partner base, we believe we can accelerate access to advanced, speech-enabled solutions that enhance the way medical reports are created and shared, as well as speed the utilization of electronic medical records. In addition, we are fully committed to - and will expand upon - the benefits we deliver to our customers and partners today.”