Originally founded by Dean Hough and David Silver in 1985, the computer software company allows customers to capture, manage, and access shared digital information through capture software. The late 1990s and 2000s brought opportunities for business advancement, product development, and acquisition under CEO and President Silver. Kofax Image Products, Inc. earned $4.2 million on sales of US$37 million by 1999. In July 1999, Kofax Image Products, Inc. announced it would be purchased by UK-based holding company DICOM Group in a reported US$75 million cash deal, with the intent to pair Kofax Image Products, Inc.’s digital capture technology with Dicom Group's distribution services in Europe. DICOM was added to the Alternative Investment Market in 1996 before being listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1997. A focus on applications software, software rebranded for partners, and hardware was set in place by Dicom CEO Reynolds C. Bish. Bish accepted the role as president, CEO, and executive director in November 2007, and oversaw the rebrand of Kofax Image Products, Inc. and Dicom Group to Kofax Inc. in January 2008. In May 2011, Kofax Inc. acquired Atalasoft Inc., an image software company whose primary product was a document imaging toolkit named dotImage. By December, Kofax Inc.’s US$48 million bid to purchase Singularity was accepted. This acquisition enabled business process management and case management software to exist through public or private SaaS platforms. In the summer of 2013, Kofax Inc. added robotic process automation to its product range with Kapow Software. Continued expansion led to Kofax Inc.’s addition to the NASDAQ Stock Market in December 2013 as. One year later, Kofax acquired Softpro, an e-signature and signature verification software company in Stuttgart, Germany, as a separate entity for US$34.7 million. By March 2015, Kofax Inc. purchased Aia Holding, a customer communications management company in The Netherlands, in a US$19.5 million cash deal. As the demand for single platform software with mobile applications increased, Kofax introduced Document Workflow, Imaging, Intelligent Capture, and Business Process Management. A variety of companies on the Fortune Global 100 list, including Aetna, American Express, Cardinal Health, HSBC, MetLife, and Visa, incorporate Kofax's mobile applications for business and consumer use. Collaboration between Visa and Kofax expanded in November 2014 when Visa increased efforts to simplify business-to-business transactions between client-facing and electronic record keeping systems in the Asia Pacific region. Kofax TotalAgility, Kapow, and Altosoft Insight analytics products interact with Visa's business-to-business transaction processes. In February 2018, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi adapted Kofax Kapow and Kofax TotalAgility to automate more than 2,000 business processes across all functions. On January 15, 2015, Kofax announced an international partnership with Xerox Corporation that added over US$300 million in shareholder value.
Lexmark acquisition of Kofax
On March 24, 2015, Lexmark International, Inc. and Kofax Inc. entered into a merger agreement. Lexmark acquired outstanding shares of Kofax Inc. for US$11 per share, or approximately US$1 billion. Shares of Kofax Inc. increased 45.73% after the company publicly announced the acquisition. Once the acquisition settled, Kofax Inc. combined with Perceptive Software, a subsidiary of Lexmark, to form an expanded business content and management software unit of their parent company. The 2015 fiscal year of Kofax Inc. ended with US$297 million in revenue. In the spring of 2016, Lexmark and its subsidiaries were acquired by an investment consortium led by Apex Technology Co. and PAG Asia Capital. The purchase was valued at US$3.6 billion.
Thoma Bravo purchases Kofax
, a private equity and growth capital firm, secured the July 2017 acquisition of Lexmark's Enterprise Software business which consists of three entities: Kofax, ReadSoft, and Perceptive Software. Following this, Kofax and ReadSoft combined into a single, newly independent Thoma Bravo portfolio company.
Kofax acquisition of Nuance Document Imaging
On February 1, 2019, Kofax announced the closing of its acquisition of Nuance Communications' Document Imaging Division. By means of this acquisition, Kofax gained Nuance's Power PDF, PaperPort document management, and OmniPageoptical character recognition software applications.
