Yorba Linda-based netGuru Inc. plans to sell its Research Engineers International business,nearly 70% of its annual sales,for $23.5 million.
The buyer is Exton, Pa.-based Bentley Systems Inc., a software company. The sale is expected to close before the end of the year, pending stockholder and regulatory approval, netGuru said on Monday.
After the sale, netGuru is set to have its document management software products, technology staffing business and outsourcing services operation.
About 125 of netGuru’s 270 workers worldwide are set to go Bentley, a computer-aided design company with yearly sales of about $300 million.
About 30 of the 55 netGuru jobs in Yorba Linda are set to shift to Bentley. The remaining netGuru operations are to stay at the company’s headquarters.
NetGuru’s Research Engineers International unit helps architects and engineers easily access the same building plans via software.
The sale likely is a prelude to going private for netGuru.
Santanu Das, the company’s chief operating officer, said netGuru wanted to sell the business because the cost of compliance as a public company under Sarbanes-Oxley was too onerous.
“We just felt that we were competing with one hand tied behind our back,” Das said.
In the next few months, netGuru plans to undergo a strategic review to see whether the company should stay public and to look at the potential of its remaining businesses.
NetGuru counted a recent market value of $20 million.
Das said the company’s outsourcing operations in India, which has about 100 workers, has been seeing growth. It helps construction companies put together forms for the steel industry, among other things.
