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February 01, 2006
Emailvision aims to raise €10M on Alternext
Emailvision, an application service provider (ASP) specialized in email marketing hopes to raise Euro 10 in an IPO on France’s Alternext, the lightly regulated junior market that belongs to France’s Euronext stock exchange.
Based on the share price for the bookbuilding, its implied valuation is Euro 30M. Not bad for a company whose annual sales for 2005 were Euro 6.85 million. It reached profitability in 2004 and is growing sales at a rate of 73 percent.
The floatation is expected to raise €10M, five of which is to expand the business, with the rest going to old investors. That makes it only a partial exit for the firm’s VCs. Investors include Sofinnova Partners, Spef Venture, and several others, from which it raised €18M since founding in 1999.
US competitors include Menlo Park-based Emaillabs (which was acquired by JL Halsey Corp last year for up to $22.5M). Both compete with software companies selling email marketing software licenses.
The recently launched Alternext has been giving online ventures fairly good valuations, better than what they’d get from VCs in a series C or D round, say industry insiders here. That may be true, but the cost of running a roadshow, producing the paperwork (Emailvision's filing document to French regulatory authorities was almost 250 pages long), and the cost of legal and investor relations relations, seems a bit high for the amount of capital to be raised.
Emailvision's founder and CEO Nick Hays acknowledges that point, explaining to the a:c euro that he has other reasons for going public, mainly that he believes that it is important for acquiring new customers and lending credibility to the firm's financial soundness.
Posted on February 1, 2006 12:14 PM | Posted to IPO | Permalink
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