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Fast Search & Transfer ASA

FAST Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Nextpage Publishing Applications Business Unit

Oslo, Norway (ots/PRNewswire)

- Acquisition to Expand FAST's Global Market Presence, Accelerate
Creation of New Publishing SDA, and Further Strengthen the Company's
Enterprise Search Focus
Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (FAST(TM)), the leading developer of
enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, today
announced a definitive agreement to acquire the Publishing
Applications Business Unit from NextPage(R), including the NXT(R),
Folio(R), LivePublish(TM) and GetSmart(TM) product lines, as well as
over 500 revenue-generating NextPage customers. The customer base
will include six of the world's top nine professional publishers,
three of the world's top four accounting firms, and many of the
world's leading financials services institutions. NextPage's document
management service, Chrome(TM), will remain with NextPage. The deal
is expected to close later this month.
FAST's acquisition of NextPage's Publishing Applications Business
Unit and its customers will allow FAST to further expand its global
presence in the Publishing market, and accelerate the development of
a new Search Derivative Application (SDA) for the Publishing sector
based upon FAST's award-winning Enterprise Search Platform, FAST
ESP(TM). While FAST already has a strong customer base and deep
experience in the Publishing sector, the integration of NextPage's
technology with FAST's Enterprise Search platform technology will
expand FAST's offerings to publishers by providing them with the most
advanced solutions for searching, retrieving, managing, and
distributing their business-critical content.
"FAST follows a strict set of criteria when evaluating acquisition
opportunities," commented John M. Lervik, FAST's chief executive
officer. "The NextPage business unit has fully satisfied these
requirements with its strong search-focused customer base, solutions
that easily integrate with FAST's Enterprise Search platform, and
market-specific expertise that will accelerate the development of new
SDAs for markets in which search applications provide business
critical value, such as Publishing. We are very pleased with this
agreement and believe it will position the Company extremely well for
the future."
As part of the agreement, FAST will assume 34 employees from
NextPage, the majority of which are employed in the U.S. FAST will
continue to offer full support and maintenance to NextPage customers
without interruption.
"This transaction benefits our customers," said Darren Lee, chief
executive officer of NextPage. "By combining NextPage's experience
and products in the publishing market, with FAST's world class
enterprise search platform, it will further improve FAST's ability to
offer the highest quality publishing applications. Together, these
products will create enhanced value for our customers and partners."
The NextPage Publishing Applications Business Unit comprises of
NXT, a complete, server-based publishing suite for publishers and
corporations to secure and deliver information on the Internet, to
corporate intranets, and on CD/DVD; Folio, a proven and widely
adopted product suite for authoring, managing, securing and
publishing professional electronic information on CD/DVD with a
Windows client; and GetSmart, a knowledge management application
designed for helpdesk and customer support centers.
Financial Summary of the NextPage Acquisition
The aforementioned acquisition by FAST was acted upon in
connection with the Company's overall strategy to explore M&A
opportunities that yield accelerated growth within the enterprise
search sector, focused around companies with a strong search focused
customer base, subject matter expertise towards an SDA, and/or
technologies that augment the value of the FAST enterprise search
platform.
NextPage will receive US$6 million in cash and be eligible to
receive performance-based payments up to a maximum of US$9 million
over four years. The deal is expected to close later in September
2004. FAST is accounting for the transaction using the purchase
method. The NextPage Business Unit will be included in the
consolidated financial statements of FAST from the acquisition date
and will be accretive to the Company's future earnings. The revenues
associated with the acquired NextPage Business Unit were in excess of
US$6 million for the first eight months of 2004.
About NextPage
NextPage Document Management Services deliver the first ever
solution for tracking documents across e-mail, hard drives and
servers, on or offline. With NextPage, users end the document chaos
that takes place whenever people try to coordinate and edit several
versions of the same document. Teams and organizations rely on
NextPage to reduce the risk of the wrong documents being edited,
reviewed or made available. Since NextPage was established in July
1999, the company has been building profitable document applications.
These solutions have been implemented by companies such as ABN AMRO
Bank, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Deloitte & Touche, Wolters
Kluwer and Reed Elsevier. For more information, visit
www.nextpage.com or call 800-NEXTPAGE or 801-748-4400.
About FAST
FAST creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions
that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with
the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable
integrated technology platform elevates the search capabilities of
enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information
they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces
total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure.
FAST's powerful enterprise search technology solutions are used by a
wide range of global customers and partners, including AT&T, Cardinal
Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Fidelity
Investments, Findexa, FirstGov.gov (GSA), IBM, Knight Ridder,
LexisNexis, Overture, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Tenet
Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio
(Telecom Italia), Vodafone, and Wanadoo.
FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the
ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group
operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, and
Japan. Additionally, the FAST Group has business partners and
customers in a number of other locations, such as Brazil, Canada and
Australia. For further information about FAST, please visit
www.fastsearch.com.

Contact:

Press Contact: Peter Gorman, Director of Corporate Communications
(US), +1-781-304-2495, Peter.Gorman@fastsearch.com

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