Is Nuance planning another acquisition? Firm ups outlook, plans to borrow $600M

Speech recognition and digital imaging software maker Nuance Communications, which has been seeing a boom in its mobile, imaging and healthcare businesses, raised its fourth-quarter outlook Tuesday, but it also announced plans to float a $600 million debt offering, sending its share price down as much as 8 percent.

The company said it expects to earn between $0.41 and $0.42 per share, up from the $0.38 - $0.41 it forecast earlier; it also said it expects revenue of $363 million to $367 million--$396 million to $400 million when adjusted to include three recent acquisitions--a slight improvement from the $355.3 million to $370.3 million--and $380 million to $395 million adjusted--it forecast in August.

Analysts expected the Burlington, Mass.-based company to report earnings of $0.40 per share on revenues of $384.4 million.

Nuance, this year, has acquired five companies, including Swype for $102.5 million this month. Nuance's technology is used by the Siri voice recognition application on Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) newest iPhone 4S.

The debt issue may indicate Nuance has some other acquisitions on its schedule, analysts said.

Nunace will report complete results Nov. 22.

For more:
- see this AP article
- see this Reuters article

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