Xerox to Buy WDS

After acquiring the e-discovery services firm Lateral Data, earlier this month, Xerox Corporation (XRX - Analyst Report) has now entered into a definitive agreement to purchase UK-based WDS. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

WDS counts large telecommunication companies among its clients, and provides them with technical support, knowledge management and associated consulting services. It employs more than 2,000 people in the U.S., UK, South Africa, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

GlobalMine, WDS’ proprietary cloud-based platform, captures, analyzes and handles millions of technical support queries spread across a diverse range of mobile devices. WDS uses this data to assist clients in resolving service or device related problems faced by their users.

WDS will be a healthy addition to Xerox’s customer care solutions portfolio. Xerox currently employs over 48,000 people across 150 locations for providing customer care solutions and manages above a million interactions through the phone and the web daily.

The WDS acquisition, along with strengthening Xerox’s position in the industry, will add illustrious telecom companies to the company’s client base. Further, WDS’ expertise and experience in technical support services would positively contribute to Xerox’s offerings.

Xerox has been pretty active over the last two months, signing new deals and making acquisitions. The company’s first-quarter 2012 earnings of 23 cents a share surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny. Its revenues grew just 1% year over year in the quarter.

Xerox has underperformed the S&P 500 so far this year. Through these acquisitions and new deals, the company will look to expand its top line and deliver better value to shareholders.

We currently have a long-term Neutral recommendation on Xerox. The company, which competes with Canon, Inc. (CAJ - Snapshot Report) and Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ - Analyst Report), maintains a Zacks #3 Rank, which translates into a short-term (1 to 3 months) Hold rating.