14 DAY TRIAL // Avast Software, the company behind the Avast Antivirus, has announced today plans to buy AVG Technologies, the business that owns the AVG Antivirus.
Vincent Steckler, Avast's CEO, says his company intends to forward a tender offer to AVG to buy all the firm's stock for the price of $25 per share and a total sum of $1.3 billion.
Avast Software is a privately owned company while AVG is currently a public enterprise listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
AVG Board of Directors on board with the acquisition
Steckler says in a blog post today that AVG's Board of Directors is giving the go-ahead for this transaction and will be recommending shareholders to vote to accept the offer.
If the AVG vote goes as planned, the acquisition will then go through the governmental regulatory procedures, and AVG will become part of Avast.
The two companies often get mistaken one for the other because they were both founded in the Czech Republic at the end of the ‘80s - the start of the ‘90s (Avast in 1991 in Prague, AVG in 1988 in the city of Brno). Avast currently operates out of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Avast and AVG will create an antivirus software behemoth
Both AVG and Avast have userbases of around 200 million users. Steckler says that, after the acquisition, Avast will have around 250 million PC and Mac users, and another 160 million mobile users. He also highlights that Avast "will be gaining some exciting mobile technology."
"The process does not allow us to talk a lot about how we would operate after combining, etc. so I can just say a little," Steckler says.
Avast has recently received a financial backing of $1.7 billion from investors such as Credit Suisse Securities, Jefferies, and UBS Investment Bank.
According to OPSWAT data from January 2015, Avast is leading the antivirus market with a market share of 21.4 percent while AVG is ranked third with 8.6 percent. After the acquisition, Avast will have a total share of 30 percent.
