An Australian captioning and transcription company has acquired Wisconsin company Caption IT to expand its footprint in the U.S., the firm recently announced.
Melbourne-based Access Innovation Holdings, doing business as Ai-Media, acquired the De Pere-based company along with acquiring CaptionAccess in Illinois for a combined $1.9 million, of which $1.6 million is in cash.
Caption IT offers captioning for live webcasts, television broadcasts and meetings, along with transcription services for meetings and events, and foreign language translation services. The company generates its revenue from corporate customers, mostly through white label product sold via resellers. Maureen DeRuyter founded the company in 2002 after spending time at a captioning company. The company employs four full-time employees and has 43 freelancers, according to Ai-Media.
“Following years of strong growth with top tier enterprise customers, we knew we needed to partner with a great technology business to provide the scale to continue to grow," DeRuyter said. "Ai-Media’s demonstrated success with the recent ACS acquisition has given us enormous confidence to further enhance the excellence in service and quality that Caption IT is known for.”
Ai-Media is a publicly listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange. The company went public in September through a $65.5 million initial public offering at a price of $1.23 per share.
Caption IT and CaptionAccess are expected to generate a combined $2.2 million in 2020. The acquisition is expected to close on Jan. 4, 2021.
"Both CaptionAccess and Caption IT have been built on foundations of high-quality service delivery to loyal enterprise customers with values and cultures that are strongly aligned with Ai-Media,” said Tony Abrahams, Ai-Media's co-founder and CEO, in a statement. “Following our successful integration of ACS in North America in recent months, I am excited that Ai-Media can provide the infrastructure and scalable technology platform to enable these great businesses to continue to accelerate their growth in the years ahead.”
