Agora to Sell Customer Engagement Cloud Business
15 December 2022 - 11:00PM
Agora, Inc. (NASDAQ: API) (“Agora”), a pioneer and leading platform
for real-time engagement APIs, today announced that it has entered
into a definitive agreement to sell the customer engagement cloud
business segment of Easemob, which Agora acquired in early 2021, to
TI Cloud Inc. (“TI Cloud”) for approximately US$14.6 million
(subject to certain closing adjustments) in an all-cash
transaction.
TI Cloud is a leading Life-cycle Customer
Contact SaaS provider in China and is listed on the Hong Kong Stock
Exchange. Agora was a cornerstone investor in TI Cloud’s initial
public offering in June 2022 and currently holds approximately 2.8%
of TI Cloud.
“Since our acquisition of Easemob in early 2021,
Easemob’s chat API business has been integrated with our platform
to complement our core product offerings. Earlier this year, we
released Agora Chat, which leveraged both Easemob’s experience in
providing chat APIs and Agora’s global infrastructure,” said Tony
Zhao, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Agora. “As we continue to focus
our resources on our core products, the board believes the sale of
the other segment of Easemob, namely the customer engagement cloud
business, is in the best interest of Agora shareholders as well as
employees of that business. TI Cloud is a market leader in customer
engagement cloud with a proven record of growth and profitability.
We believe this transaction has the potential to create significant
product and customer synergies, from which Agora stands to benefit
as a shareholder of TI Cloud.”
“We see tremendous strategic synergies between
TI Cloud’s and Easemob’s customer engagement cloud businesses, both
in optimizing our joint product offering and in better serving our
combined customer base,” commented Wu Qiang, Founder, Chairman and
CEO of TI Cloud. “Easemob’s customer engagement cloud business
perfectly complements our customer contact solutions and will
further augment our market share in verticals such as technology,
insurance and automobile. We believe this transaction will also
help accelerate the realization of TI Cloud’s vision in making
customer contact a better Experience, with improved
Efficiency.”
The revenues and gross profits attributable to
this business segment were approximately $7.2 million and $5.7
million for the year ended December 31, 2020, respectively; and
were approximately $8.8 million and $6.3 million for the year ended
December 31, 2021, respectively. Easemob's pretax profits and net
profits (including both customer engagement cloud business and chat
API business segments) were both approximately $3.2 million for the
year ended December 31, 2020, and were both approximately negative
$3.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. The total assets
attributable to customer engagement cloud business segment as of
September 30, 2022 was approximately $1.3 million.
The transaction is expected to close during the
first quarter of 2023, subject to the satisfaction of customary
closing conditions. There is no assurance that the transaction will
be completed within the anticipated timeframe, or at all.
Shareholders are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this
announcement.
About Agora
Agora is a pioneer and global leader in
Real-Time Engagement Platform-as-a-Service, or RTE-PaaS. Agora’s
mission is to make real-time engagement ubiquitous, allowing
everyone to interact with anyone, in any app, anytime and anywhere.
Agora’s cloud platform provides developers with simple, flexible,
and powerful application programming interfaces, or APIs, to embed
real-time voice, video, interactive live-streaming, chat,
whiteboard, and artificial intelligence capabilities into their
applications.
About TI Cloud
TI Cloud (Stock code: 2167.HK), founded in
Beijing in 2006, is a leading Life-cycle Customer Contact SaaS
provider in China. It offers a broad array of cloud-native customer
contact solutions, which are communication solutions that enable
enterprises to engage in multi-channel customer interactions. TI
Cloud is China’s largest provider of customer contact solutions
deployed in public clouds as measured by revenue in 2021, with a
market share of 10.3%, according to an industry report by China
Insights Consultancy.
Safe Harbor Statements
This announcement contains ‘‘forward-looking
statements’’ within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities
Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange
Act of 1934, as amended and the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of
historical or current fact included in this press release are
forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements
regarding Agora’s financial outlook, beliefs and expectations.
Forward-looking statements include statements containing words such
as “expect,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “project,” “will” and similar
expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. These
forward-looking statements are based on Agora’s current
expectations and involve risks and uncertainties. Agora’s actual
results and the timing of events could differ materially from those
anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of these
risks and uncertainties, which include, without limitation, risks
related to the growth of the RTE-PaaS market; Agora’s ability to
manage its growth and expand its operations; the continued impact
of the COVID-19 pandemic on global markets and Agora’s business,
operations and customers; Agora’s ability to attract new developers
and convert them into customers; Agora’s ability to retain existing
customers and expand their usage of Agora’s platform and products;
Agora’s ability to drive popularity of existing use cases and
enable new use cases, including through quality enhancements and
introduction of new products, features and functionalities; Agora’s
fluctuating operating results; competition; the effect of broader
technological and market trends on Agora’s business and prospects;
general economic conditions and their impact on customer and
end-user demand; and other risks and uncertainties included
elsewhere in Agora’s filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, including, without limitation, the final prospectus
related to the IPO filed with the SEC on June 26, 2020. You are
cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking
statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release.
All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by
this cautionary statement, and Agora undertakes no obligation to
revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events
or circumstances after the date hereof.
For more information, please visit: www.agora.io.
Investor Contact:
Fionna Chen
investor@agora.io
Media Contact:
Timothy Gray
press@agora.io
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