Nuance Raising Cash (NUAN)

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) just announced that it has agreed to sell 5,575,000 shares of its common stock in an public secondary offering of its stock.  Thomas Weisel Partners is the sole underwriter in this offering and has been granted a 30-day option to purchase up to 836,250 additional shares.

The company said that it intends to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes such as working capital and to fund possible investments in and acquisitions of businesses, partnerships, minority investments, products or technologies. The gross proceeds before any discounting, dilution, and selling fees would come to roughly $104.8 million.  Prior to any dilution, it has a $3.98 Billion market cap.  At the end of last quarter it listed about $354 million in cash and liquidity, but it also has some $897 million in direct long-term debt.

What is interesting is that we just named this as one of the "8 Companies Microsoft Should Buy" after its failed Yahoo! deal to our SPECIAL SITUATIONS newsletter and we named part of the reason being its extensive portfolio of speech to text software. 

You can join our open email distribution list to hear about other secondary offerings, mergers, special financings, IPO’s, restructurings, and other special situations.

Shares closed today at $18.80, and shares fell about 4% after-hours on the news. 

Jon C. Ogg
June 4, 2008