Infonic plc, the UK AIM-listed provider of innovative information management software, announces it has signed an agreement to combine its text analytics division with Lexalytics, Inc., a U.S. company based in Amherst, Massachusetts. The text analytics divisions of both companies will be combined in a UK company which will be called Lexalytics Limited. Infonic and Lexalytics are providers of proprietary text analytics technologies, both companies’ solutions automatically analyzing and summarizing the underlining sentiment of large amounts of unstructured data. Their technologies have a variety of powerful applications, such as in the financial services sector analyzing at high speed the sentiment behind multiple news stories on company stocks. Infonic’s software is being used by Thomson Reuters, Factiva and others to analyze the sentiment behind the content of data feeds. Lexalytics’ software is used to provide text mining and text analytics functionality to clients in the public relations, marketing, eDiscovery, business intelligence and financial services sectors, its software being used with the solutions of a number of other providers, such as ScoutLabs, Cisco, Smartbrief and Burrelles Information Services LLC. Lexalytics, Inc. has 14 employees based in Massachusetts. “We are very pleased to be announcing this merger today. The parties have been working toward this for almost six months and feel that our new company will comprise the most competent team in the text analytics field,” said Mark Thompson, Chief Executive of Infonic. “In Lexalytics we have found a group of people who share our passion for the power of text analytics, particularly sentiment analysis, where we feel the new entity will be the undoubted leader.” The rationale behind combining the businesses is to pool the expertise and complementary products of the parties in this specialist area and to drive joint growth in sales, utilizing Infonic’s global sales capabilities. “This is a great deal for both parties. We have experienced increasing demand for our innovative sentiment solutions and combining our corporate and PR product focus with Infonic’s formidable financial sentiment engine allows us to cover a much broader customer base,” commented Jeff Catlin, CEO of Lexalytics, Inc. and the new Managing Director of Lexalytics Limited. “We had looked closely at several ways of growing our business which included conducting detailed negotiations with venture capital firms, however, we feel this gives us greater scale and market-dominance in a much shorter timeframe. We are genuinely excited about what we can achieve together.” The deal values the merged entity at $40M. Lexalytics Limited will issue a further announcement on completion of the transaction.