Accelrys ($ACCL) has added to a string of acquisitions in recent years with the buyout of ChemSW, a provider of software for companies in pharma and other sectors to ditch paper-based systems for managing chemical inventories. To scoop up the entire company, Accelrys has agreed to fork over $15.3 million in cash and pay out up to $2 million more in milestone fees.
Fairfield, CA-based ChemSW is expected to add $1 million to $2 million in revenue for Accelrys in the year ending Dec. 31, 2013, the company said on Tuesday. Accelrys CEO Max Carnecchia has been tracking revenue closely, especially after a shortfall in sales activity in the first quarter of 2013, with the company opting to trim the high end of its annual revenue projection to $179 million from $181 million after wrapping the second quarter. ChemSW might just make up the difference.
San Diego-based Accelrys has been pushing toward providing pharma and other customers with more cloud-based software versus legacy software that operates on companies' internal servers. And ChemSW offers its chemical inventory software as both a hosted "cloud" solution and an on-premises software tool on a customer's own computers. The software is designed to help drugmakers and others efficiently comply with environmental and safety regulations.
"Accelrys is taking a major step forward in delivering solutions that support predictive sustainable innovation; we look forward to welcoming the ChemSW team and integrating their software solutions into our larger platform," Carnecchia said in a statement. "Environmental health and safety is critical for companies across industries that rely on science to innovate--from specialty chemicals and consumer packaged goods to food and beverage, agro-science, biopharmaceuticals, and oil and gas."
In recent years, Carnecchia has bought up a number of small software players that operate in the chain of discovery through commercialization of scientific products. They include such companies as Aegis, Vialis and VelQuest.
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