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May 23, 2006
France's Tagsys Moves To US, Raises Pre-IPO Round
French RFID systems developer, Tagsys, which recently moved its HQ to the US East Coast, is expected to announce today that it has raised $35M in what it hopes to be its last round before going public.
The round was led by JPMorgan Partners and brought in one other new investor, Cazenove Private Equity, as well as the previous investors Elliott Associates and Endeavour. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Bernard Vogel chairman of Tagsys' board and managing partner at Geneva-based Endeavour, the startup's earliest investor, told the alarm:clock euro that it was a 3-digit million valuation, which was an up round over the previous one.
Vogel added that this round is the pre-IPO round, expected to take place within 12 to 18 months.
Tagsys Customer, Pfizer, Is Using RFID To Combat Fake Viagra Floggers
The reason investors are bullish on this 5 year old company is that it has been winning some pretty hefty sized sales and hardware integration contracts, in particular it won the first commercial rollout for RFID labels in the pharmaceutical industry with Viagra-making Pfizer.
It has also recently won a deal with Pfizer-rival GlaxoSmithKline, according to Vogel. The RFID pharma market is a hot one now that the regulatory authoritiy for the drug industry in the US, the FDA, has mandated all drug companies to use the tagging systems instead of barcodes.
"This is the breakthrough that the RFID sector has been working towards - the first high-volume application for item level RFID tags," commented Bernard. What he means by "item level tags" is the RFID labels that go on every single bottle of pills.
All The Places RFID Tags Are Used
Companies like Alien Technology, which recently filed for an IPO, deliver RFID technology too, but their core business has been tags for tracking and tracing palettes and containers. The item level application is a higher volume one and explains investor interest in Tagsys.
Tagsys is on a roll for the time being, but there are lots of competitors in this market as RFID has been attracting quite a bit of VC money (see a roundup of recent Euro RFID deals in the link below). And Alien Technology is not sitting on the sidelines: it recently announced a tech partnership with Vue Technologies to enable it to address the item level tagging market.
If all goes according to plan, the IPOs of both these companies should make for some lively competition and some serious money flowing into an emerging tech market.
Read -Alien Technology Valued At (a:c)
Read- VC Euros flowing to RFID startups (alarm:clock euro)
Posted on May 23, 2006 09:00 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Venture Capital | Permalink
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» Tagsys, spécialiste français du RFID, annonce un tour pre IPO de 35 Millions de $ from Jacques FROISSANT Altaïde
Tagsys, start-up créée en France et dont le siège vient d'être transféré aux US, vient d'annoncer un tour de financement préparatoire à une IPO (introduction en Bourse) de 35 Millions de $. Peu connue, l'entreprise est pourtant une superbe réu... [Read More]
Tracked on May 23, 2006 07:42 PM
