LHS, a leading provider of telecom billing and customer care systems across the wireless, wireline, and IP telecom markets worldwide was awarded today the “2007 Stratecast Global Investment of R&D Resources to Address Core Billing Needs Award” by the Stratecast Research Group of Frost & Sullivan.
“The Award is bestowed upon the company that has carried out extensive research and has a strong commitment to research and development as demonstrated by the relative level of R&D expenditures to the company’s size. It also recognizes a company’s research and development program that has or is expected to bring significant contributions to the billing sector in terms of adoption, change, and competitive posture,” said Karl Whitelock, Senior Consulting Analyst at Stratecast. LHS won the award because of its significant and sustained emphasis on research and development.
LHS has since the year 2001 significantly invested into R&D and has successfully applied this investment to its business and product offerings. The investment has been mainly used for rearchitecting its BSCS business support system, resulting in BSCS iX, a fully convergent end-to-end componentized realtime billing system providing web-based applications for customer care and self-care.
“LHS was the obvious choice for our award. The company is a global industry leader regarding billing sector R&D. It has invested considerable resources in R&D and has successfully converted the results of the research into innovative and sustainable business solutions,” Whitelock added.
In the billing sector, outstanding performance in a real-time system means low latency, but high throughput is also essential in both batch and real-time modes. LHS’ BSCS iX has a latency of sub-20ms for rating and has one of the best-performing rating and billing engines on the market. The system supports full convergence across all markets, services and payments – wireline and wireless, voice, data, content and IPTV, prepaid and postpaid.
In addition, BSCS iX can be scaled to match the customer’s needs from entry level to serving to large Tier 1 subscribers. “Its forward-looking R&D investments excellently position LHS in the billing and related areas in the future when convergence of networks and technologies, and the resulting exponential explosion of service offerings are expected to take center stage,” said Karl Whitelock.
Another criterion for receiving the award is LHS’ use of technology to promote integration, interoperability, and userfriendliness. Within BSCS iX, business documents are all created in the XML format, allowing for paper or electronic bills to be defined in the layout needed by the carrier. Further flexible XML output formats enable bill generation as required as well as electronic billing e.g. for web-based customer self-care. In addition, open and standard-based APIs enable stepwise migrations, easier integration with other systems, and preintegration with major financial systems.
“Our recently announced benchmark results of BSCS iX rating more than 320 million usage data records per hour, as well as the generation of 1.69 million invoices per hour in the offline mode and 550,000 invoices per hour in the real-time mode are indicative of LHS’s ability to convert R&D efforts into business results,” said Dr. Jens Troetscher, Chief Technology Officer of LHS.
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About LHS
LHS is a leading provider of telecom billing and customer care systems across the wireless, wireline, and IP telecom markets worldwide. LHS Business Support Systems offer full convergence on various levels, supporting the complete range of business models both across the mix of fixed and mobile services, as well as prepaid and postpaid services. LHS builds innovative systems that enable our customers to introduce new services fast, helping drive revenues up, while keeping operational costs to a minimum. LHS was awarded “Best Billing or Customer Care Solution” by the GSM Association in Cannes in 2005, and won the IIR World Billing Awards for its “Overall Best Contribution to Billing” in London in 2005 and 2006. LHS is an independent software vendor (ISV) with headquarters in Germany, and offices in Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Malaysia, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates.
About Stratecast
Stratecast is the Research Group division of Frost & Sullivan. Stratecast’s industry analysts and market experts provide the telecommunications industry with market consulting and tactical strategic forecasting. This market information and industry research helps senior executives make critical business, technology, product, partnership, and tactical strategy decisions. Stratecast’s custom consulting, analyst availability and market subscriptions provide the firm with winning business growth strategies.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Swedish telecommunications company L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. said Tuesday that through a wholly owned subsidiary, it has announced a voluntary public cash offer to acquire billing and customer care software and services company LHS AG for EUR22.5 in cash per share, valuing the company at about EUR310 millionEricsson said the cash offer represents a premium of 33% to the LHS one month average share price until June 4 of EUR16.9. With the acquisition Ericsson strengthens its leading offering in revenue management with a fully integrated convergent charging and billing solution and expands its customer base, it said.
Ericsson said it has agreed to acquire 55.1% of the registered share capital and has entered into irrevocable undertakings to secure 20.0% of the shares.
In total Ericsson has secured 75.1% of the registered share capital, it said.
Carl-Henric Svanberg, president and chief executive of Ericsson, said:”Operators are quickly moving towards convergent charging and billing solutions to enhance their relationship with consumers, improve cost efficiency and limit financial risk. Ericsson and LHS form a strong constellation of prepaid and postpaid solutions ready to immediately capture this opportunity. Ericsson’s leadership in real-time charging and mediation, together with the leading billing and customer care solutions of LHS, make the two companies a leading player in revenue management and strengthen our overall multimedia offering.”
Ericsson said the multimedia market is quickly evolving and converging: industries, such as telecom, media and internet; technologies and payment options.
It said operators are adapting in order to leverage the opportunities modern networks enable and on consumers’ growing demand for new services, in a cost-efficient manner. End-to-end revenue management solutions must be able to handle convergent technologies including IP-based broadband services, a variety of business models and partner relationships, as well as be payment-option agnostic.
Ericsson said LHS employs about 550 people and said its sales in 2006 amounted to EUR71.6 million.
Ericsson said the transaction is expected to be accretive from 2008 onwards, excluding possible depreciation of acquired intangibles.
The acquisition will be conducted by means of a public voluntary cash offer to the LHS shareholders, valuing the share capital at EUR316 million, excluding treasury shares.
Enterprise value for LHS is EUR310 million after adjusting for options of EUR16.1 million and the net cash position of EUR22.2 million.
The company said the cash offer is subject to the satisfaction of all necessary approvals and clearances from competition authorities have been obtained.
It said an offer document regarding the cash offer will be published upon approval of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, or BaFin.
The publication, at which time also the offer period begins, is expected to occur in one month’s time. Completion of the cash offer is expected in the third quarter, 2007.
ABN AMRO acts as its sole financial advisor in the transaction, Ericsson said.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Ericsson has launched a bid of EUR 310 million cash for LHS, a specialist in telecom charging and billing systems. The offer values LHS at EUR 22.5 per share, equal to a premium of 33 percent to its average share price over the past month. Ericsson has agreed to acquire 55.1 percent of LHS’ share capital from LHS Beteiligungs, the investment vehicle controlled by LHS founder and chairman Hartmut Lademacher, and funds advised by General Atlantic. It also has irrevocable undertakings for another 20 percent of shares. The company expects LHS to add to earnings per share from 2008, excluding possible depreciation of intangibles. LHS has more than 120 installations, complementing Ericsson’s base of more than 150 customers in prepaid/real-time charging, and about 300 customers in mediation. Based in Frankfurt, LHS employs around 550 people and generated sales of EUR 71.6 million in 2006 and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17 percent. Completion of the cash offer is expected in the third quarter.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
LHS, a leading provider of telecom billing and customer care systems and Alcatel-Lucent, have announced a fully integrated prepaid and postpaid convergent billing system for present and next-generation voice, data and multimedia services. Alcatel-Lucent will offer the solution to all of its existing customers and new customers to support their transformation to prepaid and postpaid convergence. This solution becomes a major component of Alcatel-Lucent’s customer care and billing portfolio, and adds particular value to customers in emerging markets.
This new joint solution strengthens an existing strategic relationship between LHS and Alcatel-Lucent. In the past, the companies worked on many postpaid customer care and billing solutions together.
The solution combines components of LHS’s iX Series Release 2 system with Alcatel-Lucent’s payment suite. It also integrates all components needed for provisioning, customer care and refilling prepaid telephone cards.
The most recent example of a customer benefiting from this successful cooperation is the Belarus mobile services provider BeST, Minsk, for whom Alcatel-Lucent implemented the BSCS iX billing and customer care system.
“With this new joint solution with LHS, network operators are offered a fully converged all-in-one system, which combines rating, billing, customer care, provisioning and Alcatel-Lucent’s integration services for prepaid and postpaid customers in real time,? said Jean Pierre Gaillat, Professional Services Managing Vice President, OSS/BSS and Software Integration at Alcatel-Lucent. “Communication service providers will benefit from LHS’ best-of-breed product BSCS iX and Alcatel-Lucent’s carrier-grade payment suite, which will help them improve customer retention overall.?
“In addition, the solution is a reaction to the increased billing demands of providers who want to harmonize all processes across prepaid and postpaid segments?, said Wolfgang Kroh, CEO of LHS. “This not only significantly reduces the running costs of telecommunications providers, but also allows them to launch innovative services much faster than before with lower initial capital expenditure.“
LHS is the preferred supplier for a billing solution sold and marketed by Alcatel-Lucent. By selecting components of the widely tested and established billing software BSCS iX of LHS, Alcatel-Lucent lowers the technology and investment risks for network operators. In addition, the integration of the total solution keeps implementation costs low, while customers benefit from the flexibility of freely choosing prepaid and postpaid options. Regardless of the payment option, they can always enjoy the full range of their network provider’s services.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
LHS Wins 2007 Stratecast Award
