Rakuten Acquires Viber for $900M – Webcast
Tokyo-based Rakuten Acquires Viber, with 300M users, for total consideration $900M = Sweetheart Deal: http://bit.ly/1cLiGHK
Rakuten Global Strategy Briefing – Webcast in English
At a Board of Directors meeting held today, Rakuten, Inc. (hereinafter the “Company”) resolved to acquire global pioneering messaging and VoIP company, Viber Media Ltd (hereinafter “Viber”). The Company will acquire Viber for a total consideration of $900 million and will hold 100% of Viber’s outstanding voting stock and underwrite a new issue of shares.
Purpose of acquisition
Viber is a messaging and VoIP service operator and has approximately 280 million global registered users, and monthly active users over 100 million. Viber apps on smartphones allow users to have conversations, and through its high quality functions users can send and receive messages and images, thus Viber offers a hybrid range of services rarely found on competing platforms. Viber is rapidly growing numbers of users, especially in emerging countries.
The Company decided to acquire Viber to strengthen its global platform through the use of Viber’s range of customers in the Company’s E-Commerce and digital contents services.