At a special meeting held in a meeting room inside the Brookstreet Hotel, attending representatives for the broadband control system supplier voted 98.91 per cent in favour of the transaction.
The Friday morning gathering marked "the last shareholder's meeting for Bridgewater," chief executive Ed Ogonek said.
He went on to praise the company's workforce, which will be briefed on transition plans in the coming weeks.
"As a software and solutions company, the value in Bridgewater is from the intellectual property that our employees create and drive. We're very grateful to all the employees for their work. We've got a number of employees that grew the company almost from the start."
Terry Matthews, a founding investor and chair of Bridgewater's board said he had "mixed feelings" about the vote on the company that he had helped to begin.
"We chose very wisely the area of business to be in, which is the control layer of the mobile devices. For 10-odd years, the company has progressed and become a world leader in that area of business," he told OBJ in an interview.
"It is most unusual for a relatively small Ottawa company to be the heart of the network for Verizon. Do you know how hard it is to do business with Verizon? It is one of the biggest operators on the planet, and Bridgewater is right in the heart of their networks."
However, Mr. Matthews also noted that the sale represented another loss of a corporate headquarter in Ottawa, which he said has long-term ramifications for the city's economy.
"We don't want ... to only be an R&D (centre), because the population becomes one in 20 for a company. If you don't have deep-rooted headquartered companies here, you lose 19 out of 20 jobs."
The deal now faces court approval – that process will start next week – and the board expects the deal to close on Aug. 17.
The transaction is worth $8.20 per share in cash, which was a 30-per-cent premium over Bridgewater's closing price of $6.33 on June 16, the day before the deal was made public.
Shares of Bridgewater were not trading Friday morning and closed at $8.17 each Thursday.
In first-quarter results, revenue fell 22 per cent to $19.1 million and per-share earnings dropped three cents from 18 cents a year earlier, far below analyst expectations of nine cents per share on revenues of $20.8 million.
Bridgewater last forecast full-year revenues of around $77 million to $87 million, with income of $5.5 million to $9.5 million.
This was down from an earlier forecast of $88 million to $100 million and profit outlook of $10.5 million to $14 million.
– With files from Krystle Chow and Elizabeth Howell
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