[4]: 7A Lee Data's fast growth was conducive to the success of their initial public offering on the over-the-counter market in November 1982.
[6]: 1D Lee Data's single largest customer was the Bell System, accounting for roughly a quarter of the company's sales.
[9][10] Lee Data initially proposed to purchase Wordtronix for $6.4 million in a stock swap in July 1983.
[11] The second was of Visual Technology, Inc., a competing terminal manufacturer from Tewksbury, Massachusetts, whose acquisition Lee Data announced in November 1983 for $16.1 million in a stock swap.
[15][16] Lee Data ultimately acquired the patents and designs for Visual Technology's unrealized "supermicrocomputer" based on the Intel 80286.
[18] The first company, Datastream Communications, Inc., was based in Santa Clara, California, and developed 3270-compatible cluster controllers and file transfer software, among other products;[19] while the second company, Phaze Information Machines Corporation, developed IBM-compatible data terminals like Lee Data.
That month, following poor financial performance in the company caused by price pressures from their competitors including IBM, Lee Data announced that they had laid off 106 workers across all departments.
[21][7] Employment hovered around the 1,100 mark around 1987, but the company announced a hiring freeze that year, owing to decreased sales and quarterly operating losses reaching $1.3 million.
[32] Between October and November 1997, Apertus sold off their terminal emulation assets to Computer Network Technology Corporation of Plymouth, Massachusetts, for $11.4 million.