Keeping Israeli content analytics specialist NICE Systems (NASDAQ:NICE) on your watch list is an exercise in frustration. It's almost like trying to catch smoke -- just when it seems to be within grasp, it skitters out beyond the margin of safety. And there it sits . mocking me with its attractive growth prospects.
My annoyance notwithstanding, the story at NICE keeps getting more interesting. Total sales climbed 33% this quarter, with somewhat restrained growth of 19% in enterprise systems and more robust 85% growth in the much smaller public safety and security business. And though you have to indulge in some of that pro forma gibberish, margins improved, and adjusted operating income was up significantly.
It's probably a good idea to remember that this is a story where acquisitions play a major role -- not necessarily always in terms of revenue contributions, but in terms of supplementing the product suite. And NICE recently closed two more such deals.
NICE is buying IEX from Tekelec (NASDAQ:TKLC) for $200 million in cash. This business is a provider of workforce management tools and functions and competes with Witness Systems (NASDAQ:WITS), among others. In the other deal, NICE is buying Performix, a specialist in call-center management, for $13 million.
With these deals in place, NICE has a pretty robust suite of products for the commercial sector. And that should help stave off competitors like the aforementioned Witness Systems and its partnerships with Avaya (NYSE:AV) and Nortel (NYSE:NT). It also suggests, to me at least, that future acquisitions will more likely be targeted toward the public safety/security side, where there is robust homeland defense potential and competition from the likes of Verint Systems (NASDAQ:VRNT).
And, of course, these aren't the only competitors out there. There are lots of smaller players in the market. I know this because their PR and IR flaks keep pestering me with emails about why I don't write about their little companies.
When I run the numbers, NICE still looks undervalued . but not enough for me to get really excited. Give me a couple of points' worth of momentary market freak-out, though, and I'll change my tune pretty quickly.
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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).
