Ciber Agrees To Sell Infor Practice Unit

Solution provider Ciber, on the hook to repay $28.2 million to a lender by the end of the month, has agreed to sell its Infor practice to a software vendor partner, the company announced Monday.

The intended buyer, Infor, focuses on industry-specific business applications built for the cloud. Ciber said in its statement that it has been an Infor Alliance Partner since 2012. The Infor practice offers implementation, integration and upgrade services related to Infor software to customers in North America and Europe. Employees from Ciber's Infor practice will transition to Infor when the transaction closes.

"The sale of our Infor practice reflects a fundamental decision to hone our business to a focused IT staffing foundation with complementary integrated business consulting and application development management capabilities in a synergistic digital transformation offering," said Ciber President and CEO Michael Boustridge in the statement. "We are working to provide a seamless transition and great continuity and service to our affected customers and our employees."

[RELATED: Ciber CFO: Without A Significant Deal, Our Ability To Continue Going Is In 'Substantial Doubt']

Ciber did not disclose the sale price for its Infor practice.

Late last week, Ciber CFO Christian Metzger said the solution provider – No. 43 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 – is facing an uncertain future if it cannot repay $28.2 million to Wells Fargo by the end of March. "Without a transaction sufficient to address the company's financial situation, the company expects to conclude … that there is substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," Metzger wrote in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Friday afternoon.

Ciber told the SEC that it had failed to strike a deal by March 15 that provides funds sufficient to cover its 13-week cash forecast, which was one of the conditions of a March 3 agreement with Wells Fargo. That agreement stipulated that Ciber would be in default if it could not meet any of the conditions imposed by Wells Fargo.

As of Friday, Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Ciber was continuing to negotiate with Wells Fargo around its credit facility, Metzger said, and was also in discussions with other lenders regarding financing that would be used to repay Wells Fargo and potentially provide other working capital.

But there aren't currently any binding commitments for new financing, Metzger told the SEC, and Ciber can't provide any assurance that the company will be able to obtain alternative financing or resolve its issues with Wells Fargo.

Technology management solution provider Ameri100 announced earlier last week that it had offered to buy Ciber for $0.75 per share, a substantial premium over Ciber's March 10 closing stock price of $0.28. Ciber announced Tuesday that it was carefully reviewing and considering Ameri100's offering to determine if it was in the best interest of the company and its stockholders.

Ciber stock was up a little today - to $0.50 a share - in early trading after it released news of its agreement with Infor.

Ciber has seen double-digit sales declines in recent quarters. As part of its effort to pay off a $39.7 million loan from Wells Fargo, it has been selling off parts of its business, including its Netherlands and Norway businesses to ManpowerGroup last year for $25 million and $7 million, respectively; its Spanish operations, also to ManpowerGroup, last month for $7 million; and its German and Danish businesses to German IT company Allgeier, also last month, for $8.8 million.

Ciber was named the Infor Partner of the Year in 2014 and 2015. Since 1995, Ciber has been an Infor (formerly Lawson) alliance partner, providing services for a variety of industries including healthcare and life sciences, public sector and education, discrete manufacturing, retail and consumer products, and process manufacturing.