Quest Agrees to Second Buy: Foglight for $86.3 Million

Quest Software Inc., the red-hot Irvine database software developer, said Thursday it agreed to buy closely held Foglight Software for about $86.3 million in stock. The deal is Quest’s second acquisition this month of a company whose products complement its own.

Quest will acquire Pleasanton, Calif.-based Foglight with 1.3 million of its shares, which rose $2.25, to $66.38, in Nasdaq trading Thursday. The company’s shares are up almost fivefold since Quest went public in August at $14 a share.

Quest makes software that permits electronic gathering and distribution of data through computer systems and the Internet. With this acquisition, Quest will get Foglight’s system that monitors applications and automatically corrects any problems or alerts system managers.

Foglight’s customers include Cisco Systems Inc., eBay Inc., iVillage Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Wells Fargo Co.’s Internet banking unit. The transaction is expected to be completed in December.

Quest earned $1.8 million on sales of $47 million in the first nine months of this year, up from a $1.5 million profit on sales of $22.7 million for the same year-earlier period.

The company agreed to buy closely held MBR Technologies Inc. for about $11.5 million last week for stock and cash. MBR’s software makes it cheaper, easier and safer to change the information businesses store on their databases.