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Telus (TSX:T) to acquire Lionbridge AI for $1.2B

Telecommunication
TSX:T
06 November 2020 06:42 (EDT)
TELUS Corporation - President & CEO, Darren Entwistle

Source: Yahoo Finance

Communications giant Telus (T) is executing on its digital transformation strategy with the C$1.2 billion purchase of Lionbridge AI.

Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Lionbridge AI is a division of Lionbridge Technologies, and offers crowd-based training data and annotation platform solutions used in developing artificial intelligence algorithms to power machine learning.

The company currently has more than 750 employees working out of a number of offices worldwide, including the US, Ireland, Finland, India, the UK, Japan, Denmark, Costa Rica and South Korea.

In 2019, Lionbridge AI generated roughly $260 million in revenue, representing year-over-year growth of 29 per cent.

The company has also shown its resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, with year-to-date revenue of around $230 million – an increase from $190 million seen in the same period last year.

Darren Entwistle, President and CEO of Telus, said the deal advances the company’s commitment to provide outstanding customer experiences on a global basis, while accelerating the digital transformation and strategic growth journey of Telus International.

“The acquisition will add key capabilities and diversity to Telus International’s suite of next-generation digital solutions consistent with the ongoing execution of its growth agenda,” he added.

The acquisition is expected to further progress Telus’ penetration of the rapidly growing new economy services market, which the company says will enable it to support key AI applications as demand for high-quality, multilingual data annotation continues to rise.

Telus International anticipates financing the purchase of Lionbridge AI through its credit facilities, as well as from additional equity capital contributions from its parent organisation Telus.

Telus (T) is currently up 3.04 per cent to $23.73 per share at 11:31am EST.

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