The ShoreTel Board concluded that the proposal significantly undervalues ShoreTel and its strong prospects for continued growth and value creation as it continues to implement its long-term strategic plan, and is not in the best interests of ShoreTel stockholders.
“After careful evaluation, ShoreTel’s Board of Directors has determined that Mitel’s proposal significantly undervalues ShoreTel and fails to reflect the upside of ShoreTel’s growth initiatives and technology developments,” said Chuck Kissner, Chair of ShoreTel’s Board of Directors. “We believe Mitel’s proposal is financially inadequate, is an opportunistic attempt to acquire ShoreTel’s assets, and is not in the best interests of ShoreTel stockholders.”
Don Joos, president and CEO of ShoreTel, added, “ShoreTel is executing on a number of strategic initiatives to continue to accelerate growth and profitability, including our previously-announced strategic plan to introduce our next-generation common platform in April 2015. We are also making the necessary investments to achieve our strategic goals of growth, enhanced technology and world class customer service. We are confident that we have the right people, technology and products in place to execute our strategic plan and deliver significant value to our stockholders, and that the continued execution of this strategic plan will deliver substantially more value to ShoreTel stockholders than Mitel’s inadequate proposal.”
“Mitel’s opportunistic offer attempts to acquire ShoreTel just before its most significant new product launch, while ShoreTel’s business is transforming from a model largely based on one-time product and software sales to a recurring revenue model driven by its growing hosted services business, and only shortly after it has expanded its channel partner program to target growth in cloud-based solutions,” concluded Mr. Kissner.