Alcatel-Lucent extends its offer to Motive Inc. shareholders

Telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent has extended the tender offer it made in June to buy Texas automation software company Motive.

The previous offer to buy all issued and outstanding stock in Motive was set to expire at midnight on August 12. Today, the company announced that it will extend the offer until September 10. As of last night, approximately 27 million shares had been tendered.

Motive agreed to be sold to Alcatel-Lucent in June for $68 million, or roughly $2.25 a share, markedly higher than the stock's value at the time.

The two companies have worked together since 2005, where Motive provided software management solutions for Alcatel-Lucent's hardware. Alcatel-Lucent provides everything from CDMA, GSM, GPRS/EDGE, W-CDMA, and WiMAX network hardware to submarine and optical backbones. Motive provides service and device management software to communications providers such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Virgin Media, and Vodafone. The acquisition will fit Motive into the French telecom company's "end-to-end communications solution" strategy.

Both companies have experienced quite a bit of tumult since establishing their relationship.

Late in 2005, Motive announced it was laying off a third of its employees, and a month later came under scrutiny by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for some of its re-stated financial information. It wasn't until September of 2007 that the investigation was completed.

Since the merger of Alcatel and Lucent, the combined entity has yet to turn a profit. Amid these conditions, a recent managerial shift was triggered, where the CEO will step down and the size of the board of directors will be reduced.