* Nice buys Fortent for $73.5 million in cash
* Nice has nearly $500 million in cash, eyes more purchases
* Shares rise 3.8 percent
(Adds CFO comments, analyst quotes, share price)
By Tova Cohen
TEL AVIV, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Israeli digital recording and monitoring systems maker Nice Systems, which bought two companies in the past 24 hours, said on Tuesday it planned to continue with its acquisition strategy.
"There's always room for more acquisitions, it's a strategy to grow through acquisitions," Chief Financial Officer Dafna Gruber told Reuters. "There's no reason to think we would stop acquiring, although maybe not tomorrow morning."
Nice, which still has close to $500 million in cash following the latest acquisitions, is looking to add companies across its activities.
On Monday, Nice said it was buying Hexagon, an Israel-based maker of cellular location tracking technology, for $11 million. On Tuesday it said it bought New York-based software maker Fortent for $73.5 million in cash.
Its shares were up 3.8 percent to 108.6 shekels in late trading in Tel Aviv, well-outpacing gains in the broader market.
Hexagon's technology enables law enforcement, internal security and intelligence agencies to fight crime more effectively and will bolster its NiceTrack portfolio, Nice said.
Fortent provides analytics-based anti money-laundering and financial crime prevention software for the financial services industry including clients such as Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Mizuho, Royal Bank of Scotland and Scotiabank.
The Fortent deal is expected to be accretive from the first quarter of 2010, excluding acquisition-related expenses and amortisation of acquired intangible assets as well as certain business combination accounting entries.
Fortent will become part of Nice subsidiary Actimize.
"We view Nice's acquisition of Fortent favourably as this will solidify the company's position in the anti money- laundering and financial fraud prevention segment," RBC Capital Markets analyst Daniel Meron said.
"By integrating Fortent into ... Actimize, it effectively consolidates the space, expands customer base, provides cross-sell and operational synergies along with complementary technologies; combined, Nice now counts all the top 10 banks as its key customers and will command a clear market lead."
ACTIMIZE SALES TO RISE
In 2008 Actimize contributed $60 million to Nice's sales. This will grow to $100 million in 2010 with the purchase of Fortent.
Nice has three business lines: on the enterprise side it produces recording systems for contact centres while Actimize provides software for compliance and risk management.
"Both (these businesses) are focused on analytics solutions. We are investing a lot to create a unified solution for these elements," Gruber said.
Its third business is video surveillance and security. Last month it said it won its largest single contract, a $55 million deal from a government agency for its security solution.
"We are looking at ideas on how to expand our product portfolio. Hexagon is one example," Gruber said.
She reiterated the company's outlook from July that the second half of the year will be better than the first half, adding that the new wave of regulation in the financial sector will contribute to Actimize's business.
"That's part of the reason we believe we should take the opportunity and make the first step in consolidation by buying Fortent," Gruber said.
"We will have the first-mover advantage in consolidating the compliance and risk management space, which is very fragmented." (Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)