Fortinet to acquire Meru Networks

Fortinet and Meru Networks recently announced a definitive agreement for Fortinet to acquire Meru. The acquisition which is synergistic with Fortinet’s secure wireless vision and enterprise growth focus, broadens the company’s solutions portfolio, and expands its opportunity to uniquely address the $ 5 billion global enterprise Wi-Fi market.

Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Fortinet, said, “The acquisition of Meru Networks maps to our overall security vision of combining strong network security with ubiquitous connectivity. We expect this to accelerate our innovation through the delivery of new solutions and services to help enterprises of all sizes deploy, manage and secure wired and wireless networks in a mobile era. We believe the extension of our market-leading end-to-end security platform will increase our growth opportunities and benefit our customers and partners globally.”

The acquisition of Meru Networks adds an experienced research and engineering team to help accelerate Fortinet’s strategy to secure and manage wired and wireless devices together at any entry point to the network.

Under the terms of the agreement, Fortinet will pay $ 1.63 per Meru share in cash, an equity value of approximately $ 44 million for the transaction. The acquisition is expected to close during the third quarter of calendar year 2015, subject to customary closing conditions. Fortinet expects the transaction to have no material impact on billings, revenue, operating margins or non-GAAP profitability for the full year 2015. Once the transaction closes, Fortinet will include Meru in its guidance going forward and provide additional financial details in its second quarter 2015 financial results announcement. Prior to the close, Fortinet and Meru will continue to operate as separate companies.