Lexmark Acquires Acuo Technologies for Approximately $45M

Lexmark International LXK today announced the acquisition of Acuo Technologies, LLC, a recognized leader in high performance software and services for clinical content management, data migration and vendor neutral archives (VNA), for a cash purchase price of approximately $45 million. Acuo Technologies will become a part of Perceptive Software, a Lexmark company. Acuo Technologies, when combined with Lexmark's Perceptive Software healthcare software solutions, will enable customers to deploy a single, enterprise-wide access platform for clinical content via any electronic medical record (EMR) system. Acuo Technologies' Universal Clinical Platform (UCP) is a vendor neutral foundation that drives better care delivery through a patient-centric approach by consolidating medical images. Acuo Technologies' offerings include a single integration point for all medical imaging assets, lowering costs and risks through the UCP's ability to work with different systems – enabling flexibility and efficiency across users and departments. Many national governments, university medical centers, and urban and regional acute care centers and companies use Acuo Technologies' software and services, primarily in North America and Europe. Together, Perceptive Software and Acuo Technologies will offer a unique set of technologies to the healthcare sector—enterprise content management (ECM), VNA with clinical content viewing, and database conversion—that combine to manage the entire range of content within the healthcare enterprise. With this acquisition, Perceptive Software becomes the only vendor to own this technology in order to provide this powerful healthcare solution, driving better patient care, an enhanced clinician experience and cost savings through a single, enterprise-wide and content-based medical record that is accessible via any EMR system. Lexmark retains a strong liquidity position with a long history of cash generation. This acquisition illustrates Lexmark's consistent execution of the company's stated capital allocation framework. Lexmark's capital allocation framework is to pursue acquisitions that support growth and increase software and solutions capabilities, while returning more than 50 percent of free cash flow to shareholders, on average, through quarterly dividends and share repurchases. Since mid-2011, Lexmark has returned to shareholders more than $500 million in the form of dividends and share repurchases.