deals, speech recognition, takeovers

Nuance Still Stalking Zi

Wade Roush 2/2/09

After its last bid to acquire Calgary, Alberta-based Zi Corporation (NASDAQ: ZICA) for $0.40 per share expired on Friday, Burlington, MA-based speech technology giant Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) now says Zi has until February 13 to respond to its offer. The board at Zi, which makes software for quickly typing text into mobile devices that competes with Nuance’s speech-to-text systems, has repeatedly rejected Nuance’s takeover offers, as we reported in August and November. In its Friday announcement, Nuance emphasized that its current offer represented a 25 percent premium over Zi’s closing price on August 13, prior to Nuance’s first acquisition bid—but the offer is actually below Zi’s current market price (the company was trading at around $0.41 per share this morning). After Zi rejected Nuance’s August bid, Nuance filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the Canadian firm.

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at (617) 252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wroush.