WSI buys WXC!

[ams30721us]

As a WXC customer who has been impressed with the WSI products I am pretty excited about what this COULD mean in less than 30 days. What are some other thoughts out there?

WEATHER SERVICES INTERNATIONAL ACQUIRES WEATHER CENTRAL

Andover, MA and Madison, WI – August 9, 2012 – Weather Services International (WSI) today announced an agreement to acquire Weather Central, a Madison, WI based global provider of interactive weather technology, graphics and data services for professional, media, and consumers delivered to television, web and mobile screens. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“The acquisition of Weather Central enables us to immediately expand the range of products we offer to each company’s business clients in television, wind energy, insurance and retail, as well as increase the speed at which we can develop new innovations,” said Mark Gildersleeve, president of WSI. “Our goal is to make the best products available to our collective customer base. Every broadcast customer, for example, will gain access to new tropical data, radar data, forecast models, and severe weather tracking tools within the first thirty days at no charge. In addition, we are offering a wider suite of products in the interactivity, social, news, traffic, web, mobile and video categories.”

Weather Central brings additional strength in core weather capabilities with its data cloud and neural network initiatives. Weather Central’s common user profile capabilities and application expertise will improve the end user experience for both company’s professional clients. Among the company’s first joint projects will be the application of weather analytics to improve advertising effectiveness in the retail sector.

“This acquisition will accelerate the delivery of professional weather solutions to business customers around the globe” said Patrick Vogt, CEO of Weather Central. “We believe there is tremendous potential to grow our weather services business outside North America and to be a more effective competitor generally. By fully harnessing the resources of both organizations, we will make even more advancements in weather data and technology that our clients can apply directly to the bottom line.”

Patrick Vogt will step into a new role supporting the integration and key customer initiatives, with all of his efforts focusing on ensuring a smooth transition. Blackstone Advisory Partners L.P. served as WSI’s financial advisor in the transaction and Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP acted as legal advisor.

ABOUT WSI CORPORATION

WSI is the world's leading provider of weather-driven business solutions for professionals in the aviation, energy and media markets, as well as multiple federal and state government agencies. WSI is a member of The Weather Channel Companies and is headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts with offices in Birmingham, England. The Weather Channel Companies are owned by a consortium made up of NBC Universal and the private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital.

ABOUT WEATHER CENTRAL, LP

Weather Central, LP, founded in 1974 by broadcasters and meteorologists based in Madison, Wisconsin, is the leading provider of professional on-air, online, print, mobile and enterprise weather solutions and forecasting science to companies worldwide. Utilizing the company’s dynamic weather graphics, precise forecast models, data, and patented technology, more than 1,000 partners and hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide benefit from Weather Central’s attention to weather presentation, detail and insight.

[Jim Marusak]

talk about a spending spree. didn't TWC just buy the weather underground not even a month ago? how much faster will this consolidation go? and anyone know who is the next takeover target?

[ams30721us]

talk about a spending spree. didn't TWC just buy the weather underground not even a month ago? how much faster will this consolidation go? and anyone know who is the next takeover target?

WSI seems to buying up all the competition. First Wunderground now WXC next I will guess "Gibson Ridge." Hopefully this will not REALLY happen.

[Jim Marusak]

just discussed this with a couple of friends here at work. best we're thinking for the next possible to be aquired, when it comes to actual bottom-line possibilities, probably would be AWS-Weatherbug (observation network), and Baron Services (next competator to WSI/WXC when it comes to tv-production and other products). Gibson Ridge would be more a back-end thing than a front-end and probably not go so well in the profit dept. but TWC doesn't have unlimited $$$ and will not do all the acquiring.

(edit 6:27pmct) besides, i just thought of something that might limit potential future aquisitions that WSI would have to be careful of. Possible anti-trust issues. consolidate too much and at some point you'd have to break things back up (a la at+t) or regulate like heck (like MS, Apple, or Google). you think the weather industry would want that hanging over itself?

[CandymanColumbusGA]

We use WSI at our station and it's the only graphics system I've used. That said, some of the stuff I've seen from WXC (Dual Pol being the BIGGEST gain for WSI in this plus meteograms????) is fantastic and could be useful. Of course the WXCers get to use the RPM which, in my opinion, is a fantastic model! In actuality, and from the emails sent out this afternoon, WXC users get more out of this from the start. They'll have access to the RPM within a few weeks. While I'm sure the WXC perks won't be seen by WSI users until the early part of next year... Of course, that's all speculation and just my opinion. lol