Alvarion buys WiFi co Wavion for $30m

Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR) has acquired WiFi applications company Wavion Ltd. for $30 million in cash. Alvarion said, "This acquisition marks another milestone in the execution of Alvarion’s strategic plan aimed at shifting its primary focus from WiMAX-based RAN solutions to becoming a multi-technology wireless broadband solution powerhouse." According to Alvarion, Wavion had $16 million revenue in the preceding 12 months. Alvarion expects that Wavion will begin contributing to its net profit in the second quarter of 2012. Alvarion adds that it believes that the explosion of broadband data usage is creating an ever-growing set of coverage and capacity challenges that cannot be addressed effectively by any single technology. This is true for all types of wireless broadband networks from Tier-1 mobile carriers to wireless internet service providers, enterprises, governments and municipalities, and private network operators in various vertical markets. Wavion's WiFi technology including its beamforming capability, has reached a level of maturity and acceptance that makes it an attractive option for addressing the most demanding mission-critical applications. Alvarion intends to combine Wavion’s best-of-breed WiFi platform with Alvarion’s 4G RAN solution and recently-acquired distributed antenna systems (DAS) capabilities to create a full suite of capacity and coverage solutions that is not available from any other vendor. Nochi Dankner's venture capital arm Elron Electronic Industries Ltd. (TASE: ELRN) owns 67% of Wavion, and expects to receive $18 million from the sale and report a net profit of $17-20 million, depending on the conditional payout. Alvarion's share price fell 6.8% on Nasdaq yesterday to $1.09, giving a market cap of $67 million, but rose 5.8% by early afternoon on the TASE today to NIS 4.20. Elron's share price rose 6.8% to NIS 15.03, giving a market cap of NIS 440 million.