Aconex Agrees to Acquire Worksite

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwired - Jul 15, 2015) -  Aconex Limited (ASX: ACX), provider of a leading cloud collaboration platform for the global construction industry, today announced an agreement to acquire Worksite, provider of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) project cost management solution, from ARES Project Management LLC. The acquisition is valued at approximately A$6.5 million and is expected to close by the end of July 2015.

Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Aconex will purchase the intellectual property and assets of Worksite for an initial cash payment of A$3.0 million at close, and up to A$3.5 million in cash and Aconex shares in FY17, subject to certain performance conditions for the business.

Aconex plans to integrate Worksite's solution with its project-wide collaboration platform to offer customers unified cost management across the project lifecycle, including earned value management, budgeting, cost performance, and forecasting. The acquisition supports the company's strategy of expanding its product functionality and global presence, while accelerating its entry into the collaborative cost management market.

The integration of cost management with project-wide collaboration enables participants both within and across organizations to collaborate around a secure, centralized view of project budget and costs. Asset owners, contractors, program managers, and project teams can tightly coordinate cost management to reduce risk and improve efficiency in payments, change management, claims, audit compliance, performance reporting, and other core processes.

Aconex plans to increase research and development costs for the integration of Worksite and the build-out of its integrated cost management solution. As a result, the acquisition is expected to be moderately dilutive to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and net profit after tax (NPAT) for the next 24 months, before becoming accretive in subsequent years. Aconex does not expect the anticipated dilution to impact its current public forecast of FY15 and CY15 financial results, as disclosed to the market through the ASX on 17 June 2015.

"Connecting cost management to the Aconex platform will bridge internal cost systems and external collaboration, providing a single source of truth for better financial visibility and control," said Aconex CEO Leigh Jasper. "Participants project-wide will be able to track budgets, contracts, claims and payments, and cost and schedule changes -- both actual and potential. All of this information will be connected to collaborative processes managed on Aconex, offering new insights into the current and forecasted status of the project. Project cost information can now flow seamlessly from the collaboration platform into internal enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The acquisition of Worksite will further increase the value that we deliver to our customers, broadening the Aconex product portfolio and accelerating the growth of our global user network." 

About Aconex

Aconex Limited provides a leading cloud collaboration platform for the global construction industry. This platform gives owners and contractors in the construction, infrastructure, and energy and resources sectors project-wide visibility and control between the many different organizations collaborating across their projects. With more than 60,000 user organizations and approximately A$1 trillion of project value delivered in more than 70 countries, Aconex is the industry's most widely adopted and trusted platform. Founded in 2000, Aconex has 41 offices in 22 countries around the world, including headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, California. The company's ordinary shares are traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the ticker code ACX.

Supporting Resources

For more information on Aconex, please visit:

• Investor Center: http://investor.aconex.com
• Website: http://www.aconex.com
  
  

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release includes certain forward-looking statements that are based on information and assumptions known to date and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results, performance or achievements could be significantly different from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of Aconex. These factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the statements contained in this announcement.