November 08, 2007
Buoyant IPO For VC-backed U-Blox
One week after its IPO on the Swiss Stock Exchange, GPS chipset maker u-blox is looking at a 30 percent gain on its issue price. Its valuation at IPO was SFr 374.6, and the transaction generated about SFr 155M in proceeds.
Among its backers are two venture funds, 3i and iGlobe Partners. The company was founded in 1997 and is a university spinoff (ETH Zurich).
See UBXN on SWX
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March 27, 2007
Streetcar - London's Pay As You Go Car Rental Business Raised £6.4M And Plans IPO By Year End
Streetcar which was founded in 2004 has raised £6.4M to help fund its expansion before a possible flotation, reports The Times. The company claims has more than 10,000 members and says it will use the financing from Smedvig Capital to increase the size of its fleet of its cars and to continue its growth outside London.
Streetcar has a number of comparable startups in other countries like Zipcar in the US that have been funded and that are growing in urban areas. Car clubs such as Streetcar are becoming increasingly popular in large cities because they help to cut the expense of owning a car. Members pay an upfront fee and can then book a rental car that sit in parking lots throughout a city. Prices start from £4.95 an hour.
The company's founders financed the start-up costs with their own savings and a £100,000 bank loan. They were refused credit by 70 banks and angels but stuck to it.
Read - FEATURE: Streetcar it might just work (Real Business)
Read - Streetcar names desire for £6m expansion plan
(The Times)
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February 12, 2007
AdenClassifieds Readies IPO In France
The French press is reporting that online classified ads startup, AdenClassifieds, has filed for an IPO. No details on the date or the amount to be raised yet. It acquired Openmedia for €7.5M which was doing about €1.4M in annual sales earlier this month to bulk up its business.
AdenClassifieds is the result of a rollup of three companies operating several web sites: Cadremploi, Keljob, Kelformation, and Explorimmo - offering job ads and real estate ads. AdenClassifieds now employs about 250 people and has about €33M in annual sales in 2006, up from €21.1M in 2005. Its Ebitda was €3.3M in 2006, up from €2.3M in 2005, according to Les Echos.
Besides strategic investors like Publiprint, shareholders that stand to benefit from an IPO include Paris VC, Banexi Ventures, which had been backing Keljob since 2000.
Source - Adenclassifieds vise une entrée en Bourse rapide - INTERNET ADENCLASSIFIEDS (les echos)
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January 29, 2007
Polish Action Games Publisher Prepares For IPO
Warsaw, Poland-based City Interactive, a publisher of entertainment software with two development studios, is heading for an IPO on the local exchange. Its PR says that it has mandated IDM SA for the transaction and the floatation should take place in the second quarte. We don't have any further details.
The company was founded in 2002 as a merger of a games publisher and two development studios.
Poland seems to have a lot of small games companies, according to The Polish Games Industry: A List of Polish Game Developers & Publishers, published by a student as a result of his Master's thesis, and now an employee of City Interactive. According to the list, City Interactive is number two, and Techland's number one.
Read - The Polish Games Industry: A List of Polish Game Developers & Publishers (umk.pl)
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January 24, 2007
Poland's Gadu Gadu Set For IPO
Poland's largest Internet chat provider Gadu-Gadu has set its IPO share price and plans to issue up to 3.71M new shares aiming to raise PLN 75.1M (about €20M) to finance foreign acquisitions and a possible entry into the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) phone business, reports Interfax, referencing the company's prospectus published Monday. It also said the startup is looking to expand Eastwards, Ukraine and then Russia.
Since we only have limited access to Interfax (the free bits), we couldn't find out what the implied valuation is for Gadu Gadu, or what date in February the IPO is slated for.
There's some good background on the company on the eurotelco blog in a post that said way back in September that Gadu Gadu was going for an IPO. Among other interesting items, it says that Internet users in Poland opted for a homegrown Internet communications platform rather than others, such as MSN Messenger or AIM.
Read - Polish Power (eurotelco blog)
Read - Polish online communicator Gadu-Gadu eyes PLN 75.1 mln in IPO proceeds, foreign expansion(Interfax Central Europe)
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January 23, 2007
Euro VC-Backed IPOs Up In 2006
Last year was the best for European VC-backed IPOs since 2000, according to VentureWire analyst Russ Garland in a report published in VentureWire Alert. (It is a free daily newsletter from DowJones VentureWire and provides a sampling of what is available with a full-subscription).
The region outperformed the US in terms of the number of floatations: 91 for Europe versus 56 in the US. The short report did not say if the US IPOs actually raised more money per company.
Garland also said that "more European venture-backed companies went public in 2006 than in any year since 2000, but it took them a lot longer and they didn't raise nearly as much capital". He was referencing VentureOne's latest analysis of the data. Here are some other details reported:
The median amount these companies raised in an IPO in 2006 was EUR13.1 million. That compares with a median of EUR42.1 million for the 183 venture-backed European companies that went public in 2000.The 2006 crop went a median of 5.9 years from getting their first equity to their IPO. In 2000, the median time to liquidity was 1.4 years. European companies acquired last year had gone just as long since their first venture round as those that went public - a median of six years.
The median pre-IPO valuation of the European companies was EUR41.5 million - up from EUR36.7 million in 2005, and the highest since 2001. VentureOne is owned by Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of VentureWire.
The good news is that the public markets in Europe were doing what they are supposed to in 2006, providing a "reliable source of fresh capital" for companies. But the bad news, at least from the VC perspective, is that not all IPOs are providing an exit for investors.
The a:c notes that this is something that has pretty much been the case for the past few years, and probably explains why many VC-backed companies choose the M&A, preferably all cash, route to the exit.
Another source, AltAssets, published an article on the same subject. There we could see that while the number of IPOs continues to climb each year since 2001, it is at about half the 2000 IPO bubblicious level of activity.
It will be interesting to see what happens this year as the European tech economy improves: will the IPO become a reliable exit channel for VCs (ignoring the debate about whether or not it should be the point of exit ) and will the length of time it takes to reach IPO shorten?
Link- VentureWire Alert Subscription
Read - Number of European venture-backed IPOs in 2006 highest since 2000 (AltAssets)
Read - Ten Tech IPOs In Europe Over $100M
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November 13, 2006
EDF's Alt Energy Unit Planning IPO
It's a good time to be floating alt energy companies in Europe- check out the graphic from New Energy Finance (below) and EDF, the French utility which owns a large chunk of the "green" power company, EDF Energies Nouvelles, has noticed it too apparently.
The French press is reporting that EDF Energies Novelles will announce the details of an IPO planned for later this month that could raise up to €550M to build up the firm's wind, biofuel, hydroelectric and solar plants. The company filed its papers with the AMF, the French equivalent of the SEC, in late September.
Read . EDF Energies Nouvelles : les modalités d'IPO connues dès demain (voila.fr)
Read - Alt Energy Big Swinging (a:c euro)
Posted at 07:22 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 16, 2006
VC-backed Nanogate to float on German Exchange
Venture-backed Nanogate, a developer of surface coatings for the machinery and automotive industry, plans to raise about €15.5M this week on the Entry Standard, the lightly regulated German stock exchange, in an IPO. About €12M of that total should go to the company. The rest is for old shareholders. The IPO would value Nanogate at about €50M. the company is on track for about €6M a in sales this year and is profitable.
The figures are based on the floatation going out in the middle of the book building range.
The firm plans to invest in organic growth, but also to acquire complementary technologies. The seven year old company's backers include German private bankier, Sal. Oppenheim and the venture firms: Equinet Venture Partners und 3i. About 20 percent of the company is still owned by its founders, according to an earlier report by dowjones.
Read - Nanogate - Gewagte Vorhaben (goingpublic.de)
Read- Nanogate ( Dowjones)
Posted at 09:03 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 23, 2006
Infineon Spinoff Qimonda Confirms Float - But Who Can Spell It?
With all the speculation about Europe's IPO markets sucking business away from the US public markets, it is interesting to note that German memory chipmaker Qimonda has confirmed it will float on the NYSE.
The IPO location, first announced earliler this year, was confirmed on Friday in a Bloomberg report that also said the plan is to raise a whopping $1.3B.
But we're wondering about the effect its name will have on its IPO plans. Isn't there a rule somewhere that you don't start a company name with Q (with all the issues of not having a "u" after it). And it should not have a vowel ending either ("o" and "a" and "e" are too easy to confuse in the minds of English speakers).
Journalists are already misspelling the name big time. (The first version of this post even had it wrong in the title). Here are a few of the misspellings we trolled on the various industry wires and news websites: quimondo, quimonda, and qimondo.
Qimonda's Gimmicky Corporate Imagery Confounds Rather Than Communicates.
How can potential buyers of the stock find analysis and information about the stock if they cannot remember how to spell it?
Read - Infineon to Raise as Much as $1.3 Bln in Qimonda IPO (bloomberg)
Posted at 07:09 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 06, 2006
Parrot Gives Europe Another Bluetooth IPO Winner
We're a couple of days late in reporting this but it's worth noting that French Bluetooth gearmaker, Parrot, successfully listed on the Euronext last week. The venture backed firm now has a market cap of €236M.
Parrot's founder and CEO, Henry Seydoux, is now a multi-millionaire, at least on paper, as he owns a good 35 percent of the company's shares, while the VCs together have about 17 percent.
This makes a second successful venture-backed IPO in the Bluetooth wireless sector for Europe. The first biggie was Cambridge Silicon Radio, which now has a market cap of £1.54B.
Read- Parrot to IPO (a:c euro)
Posted at 12:01 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
VC-Backed Trolltech IPO Gets A Bounce
Shares in Norwegian mobile Linux software specialist Trolltech, which is venture backed, rose by nearly 10% on the Oslo stock exchange as the company completed its IPO, which was nearly two times oversubscribed, according to eetimes.
After its first day of trading, Trolltech's market cap is €116M based on the latest price published on the Oslo stock exchange.
It is the first IPO in Europe of an open source software company in the new (post bubble nuclear winter) cycle. We need to do a bit more digging but at this point it doesn't look like a Q-Cells-like return for its VCs.
Read - Mobile Linux developer hails successful IPO (eetimes)
Posted at 09:22 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 27, 2006
VC-Backed Norkom Floats
Norkom Technologies floated on the Dublin (IEX) and London (AIM) exchanges this week, achieving a market cap of $126M and raising $26.4M, according to Finextra. The profitable company develops anti-fraud and anti-money launder software for used by banks and insurance companies.
New capital will be used for acquisitions and to strengthen its market leading position.
Norkom raised about €30M ($37.8M) in funding from investors including Trinity Venture Capital and Island Capital, according to ThePost.ie. The founders retained about 40 percent of shares pre-IPO.
Read - Norkom Technologies begins trading on IEX and AIM (Finextra)
Read - Dublin software firm forecasts €24.5m in revenues (ThePost.ie)
Posted at 08:33 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 23, 2006
French Search Engine Optimization Startup To Float
Netbooster is expected to float on Alternext (the lightly regulated exchange that belongs to Euronext) this month. If it prices in the middle of its bookbuilding range it will raise €5M. The French search engine optimization provider with sales of €8.5M and a reported 70 percent growth rate in 2005, wants to expand its business internationally.
It expects to grow sales by about 60 percent this year.
Read- IPO et internationalisation au programme de NetBooster (Journal Du Net)
Posted at 02:17 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 20, 2006
More About Tech IPOs On AIM
If AIM, the lightly regulated arm of the London Stock Exchange, was a startup, our hypemeter would be getting a reading of 8.5 to 9. Its pitch to US investors is getting a lot of resonance. Today Business 2.0 weighs in with quotes from Index Ventures' GP Danny Rimer.
AIM was used by IGM, a four year old provider of mobile value-added services in East Asia, to raise new capital this quarter.
There is a chance it could all go terribly wrong. Let's not forget Pets.com and other problem children of the dot-com bubble, which the Nasdaq welcomed with open arms not so long ago. Investors will need to proceed with caution to make sure venture capitalists don't start dumping ailing startups on these "light touch" markets, with bankers and entrepreneurs playing along."You need to get these three parties to behave well," says Rimer, the London-based venture capitalist. "It may be a tall order, but if it's accomplished we could see something like the AIM becoming what the Nasdaq was back in the mid-'90s." In other words - a market for promising companies where investors actually made money, before the bubble started inflating.
Read-
Why tech IPOs are moving to Europe The U.S. tech-IPO (Business 2.0)
Posted at 05:49 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 15, 2006
London's AIM Pitching To US VCs
The marketing team for London's AIM exchange have been logging a lot of air miles making their pitch to investors in Europe and the US, which is starting show in the statistics.
That's good for AIM. The question is: how many of those listings achieved a market cap big enough to give early investors a smashing exit?
Read - The war for start-ups going public (cnn money)
Posted at 05:46 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 14, 2006
IPO Planned For Bluetooth Gearmaker Parrot
Parrot, a French developer of Bluetooth mobilephone accessories, announced it has been approved for an IPO on the Eurolist (from Euronext) IPO.
The venture-backed company is expected to raise between €91M and €103M. Its backers include Sofinnova Partners, Spef Venture, EPF Partner, SGAM Alternative Investments, and CIC Capital Prive.
These have been patient investors. The firm raised its first round of VC in 1995. It also still has its founder, Henri Seydoux, as CEO.
Its achieving quick growth with annual sales in 2005 of €80.6M up from €9.2M in 2004. It has a 9.5 percent margin.
Read- Entretien avec Henri Seydoux (boursier.com)
Posted at 05:06 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Weborama For France's Alternext
Weborama, a French web traffic and emarketing analytics technology provider, is to list on the Alternext (lightly regulated market of Euronext Paris) to raise €4M by the end of the month. Its offering price implies a valuation of about €20M.
Annual sales in 2005 were €2.6M, up 40 percent from the year before. It reports a 30 percent profit margin. Customers include Meetic, the French dating site, MSN France, and Neuf Telecom. Founded in 1998, Weborama plans to use the capital to grow internationally.
Read - Weborama : introduction sur Alternext (weborama PR)
Read - Webora Bientot (neteco)
Posted at 11:33 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 13, 2006
German Games Developer 10tacle To Float
Germany's 10tacle Studios, a high-end games developer, aims to raise about €20M on the Frankfurt stock exchange next week. The shares, mainly new ones, will be offered on the General Standard market (not the lightly regulated Entry Standard).
10tacle, which develops racing games with rich graphics, as well as role playing and combat games (first person shooters), has annual sales of €17M, a positive EBIT, employs 180, and has studios in Germany, France, Singapore, UK, and Bratislava, it reports.
Back in April, 10tacle raised an undisclosed amount from Munich Venture Partners, along with other unnamed investors. It was an interesting VC investment - more about access to technology than it is about money.
Although a newcomer to the VC market here, Munich Venture Partners has close ties to the Fraunhofer Institute whose claim to fame is the development of MP3, among other goodies. The deal is meant to give 10tacle access to Fraunhofer's R&D teams to build on the startup's exisiting gaming engine, or middleware, platform.
Read - Spieleentwickler 10tacle bietet Aktien zu 11,75 bis 13,50 (reuters)
Posted at 03:43 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 11, 2006
Indian-German Seekport Seeks IPO
The German press is reporting that online search company Seekport, founded two and half years ago, is to list on the AIM in the next six months, with plans to list on Nasdaq subsequently.
The success of the floatation of Chinese search portal Baidu is apparently giving current shareholders confidence, according to press reports.
Seekport was founded by former Infospace executive, Joachim Kreibich, in December 2003. It runs a consumer oriented search portal and delivers white label search solutions to the likes of lastminute.com and publisher IDG. Seekport's sales are reportedly €7.5M last year with €14M forecast this year. It operates in Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy and Saudi Arabia.
One third of Seekport is held by Aftek Infosys, an Indian IT firm. It was Aftek that originally announced the plans for a float.
Read - Deutsch-indische Suchmaschine soll an die Nasdaq (Der Spiegel)
Read - Seekport plans NASDAQ listing in 12 months (moneycontrol)
Posted at 09:48 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 02, 2006
Float Raises €10M For Mobile Marketer YOC
YOC's share price climbed slightly on its first day of trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Its IPO share price gave it a €33.3M valuation and €10M to invest in international expansion, including opening an office in Poland and plans for small acquisitions.
The largest shareholder in the company is now founder and CEO Dirk Kraus with 25%. He has an 18 month lock up. The company, which develops advertising campaigns and content for mobilephones, employs 53 and had sales of €5.3M in its last annual figures.
Read - Börsendebüt von YOC AG geglückt
Posted at 03:10 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 01, 2006
YOC Mobile Marketing Startup To Float
Berlin-based YOC, a mobilephone marketing startup, is hoping to raise some fresh capital next week on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange's to fund growth.
The six year old firm's bookbuilding range gives it an implied valuation of up to €36M and the stock will be listed on the Entry Standard exchange (lightly regulated).
YOC (your opinion counts) employs 50 and achieved a positive EBIT for the first time in 2004. It has annual sales of €5.3M and claims it's on a 50 percent a year growth rate for both sales and profit.
Its product line is similar to those of rival startups Flytxt's and TXT4's and includes text messaging-based advertising solutions and some mobile content (ringtones, casual games etc).
The startup's lead bank on the IPO is Sal. Oppenheim.
Read - Neuemissionen: YOC (finanzen.net)
Posted at 06:45 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Biogas IPO Gives VC Quick Return
Schmack Biogas, which delivers turnkey alternative energy plants, floated this week on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. It raised €73M, achieving a post-money valuation of €153M. 
The transaction gave Zurich-based SAM Private Equity (which does both early and late stage VC investment) a 10 times return on the shares it managed to sell in the IPO. It was a partial exit on a financing round that it participated in just last May, SAM Private Equity said.
Biogas plants converts raw sewage, manure, and other natural waste products into fuel which can be used for heating and cooling.
Read - Schmack Biogas AG successfully listed at the Prime Standard in Frankfurt
Posted at 06:14 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 30, 2006
Italian Online Mortgage Broker Wooed To IPO
Investment bankers are wooing Italy's Multui Online, a mortgage broker, now that it's showing quick growth in sales. According to BusinessWeek, the founders raised a million in seed financing in 2000 in "half an hour".
MutuiOnline turned profitable in 2003 and hit $19 million in revenues last year, up 76% over 2004. With an estimated valuation in excess of $128 million, the company will likely pay investors handsomely for their steely nerves.The co-founders -- now a post-bubble success story -- field calls from investment bankers eager to take them public. "Their execution was excellent," says Michele Appendino, founder of Net Partners Ventures in Milan, which provided seed money to MutuiOnline. "There is still a lot of room for growth."
Interesting to see Net Partners quoted. It is a VC fund that was formed to invest only in Internet ventures in the late nineties, a rare Italian based early stage fund. It has obviously survived, although we note a bit of style drift circa 2003, with investment into a retail clothing chain and a manufacturer of super-small motors.
Read - Venture Capital Takes Off (BusinessWeek)
Posted at 09:56 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 25, 2006
IPO Will Give Trolltech's Trolls A New Reason To Dance
Trolltech has filed to go public in Norway, according to a post in today's PE Week Wire. The developer and distributor of professional software development tools for Linux phones and devices, which has been making the moves that presage a float, such as expanding its board and hiring C-level execs, has filed with the Oslo Stock Exchange.
If Linux takes off in the mobilephone market the way the firm hopes, it will be a startup to note.
Trolls forming the Qt 4 logo in the Qt 4 Dance music video
But we say that Trolltech already has dibs on a place in tech history because it is one of the first where employees created their own music video upon the release of a new version its software. The image above is an outake from it.
Founded in 1994, Trolltech raised an undisclosed amount of VC in 1999 and a series B round of $6.7 million about 16 month ago in a deal led by Index Ventures, joined by previous investors Teknoinvest and Northzone.
View - Qt 4 Dance Music Video [Needs the Quicktime 7 preview to play]
Read - Trolltech has filed an application for listing / (press release)
Read Trolltech has filed(PE Week)
Posted at 04:03 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 20, 2006
Something In Common With 1998
BusinessWeek's article, "It Feels Like 1998 All Over Again", looks for signs of a Silicon Valley venture bubble.
The only thing that we could see from our Euro vantage point that was like 1998 "all over again", besides a certain mushrooming of consumer Internet startups, was that Europe had more IPOs activity than the US had last year, just like it did in 1998.
In 2005 Europe's public capital markets raised more new money in IPOs than the US and Greater China combined, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers. And in 1999, corporate finance boutique, ICON, published that little icon noting a similar outperformance on the IPO market in Europe, driven mainly by telecom, media, and tech stocks.
There is a key difference between now and then:in 2005 the IPO numbers were driven by several other types of stocks: telcos yes, but oil and gas companies too. Bank floatations and food corporations were also in the mix. So we doubt the observation has much relevance.
Read- PwC IPO Watch 2005
Posted at 11:30 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 12, 2006
Viscom IPO Raises €54M
The Viscom IPO in Germany raised €54M, which was exactly the amount the industrial inspection systems company was aiming for (including Greenshoe). Almost all of that new capital is to be used byViscom for expansion and some strategic acquisitions. Its market cap is at about €184M.
The stock went out at €20.4, slightly above its issue price of €18.50 and was trading at $18.64 as of market close yesterday.
Read - Deutsche Boerse IPO details
Posted at 07:07 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 11, 2006
Plastic Logic Looking For New Capital?
Plastic Logic, a UK company that makes key parts for OLED displays, is going to be investing between $50M and $100M to build a new plastic electronics fabrication plant, according to one of its backers in an article in EETimes.
He did not say how the fab would be financed.
From the EETimes
Plastic Logic (Cambridge, England) has a roughly 12-inch diagonal display prototype working that combines an active plastic logic backplane with an electrophoretic display technology from E Ink (Cambridge, Mass.). The company announced a collaboration with E Ink in December 2004.Hauser [Hermann Hauser of Amadeus, one of its VC backers] told his audience said that Plastic Logic is performing a detailed investigation of the costs of volume manufacturing of such active backplanes and that it seemed likely that the factory would cost between $50 million and $100 million and would be able to turn out millions of displays a year.
“We can build our first fab starting now for completion in about 18 months,” Hauser said. He said that after selection of a location, construction would begin in 2007 with a view to volume manufacturing in 2008.
Plastic Logic has raised more than $50M in venture capital to date from US, Chinese, European, and Japanese investors.
Read - Cambridge Startup Mulls Plastic Electronics
Posted at 06:44 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 08, 2006
Float For Machine Vision Firm Viscom
This week, Germany’s Viscom, which sells optical and sensor systems used by OEMs like Siemens and Bosch in electronics inspection gear, is to float on the Frankfurt stock exchange.
It aims to raise about €54M. About 20 percent of the float will be going to the founders, and the rest to the company to fund expansion and strategic acquisitions.
At 21 percent a year over the past four years, the firm’s growth rate is above the semiconductor equipment industry’s average, say press report. The rest of the equipment supply sector is growing at about 7 percent a year.
In 2005 its turnover was €50.5M with an EBIT margin of 20 percent. The implied valuation of the firm, based on its bookbuilding price range is between, €174M and €208M,
Viscom's hardware spies defects such as those that occur in the manufacturing of electronics and in the mounting of semiconductor devices on circuit boards.
Read -
IPO von Viscom: Marktführer aus Niedersachsen
Posted at 07:48 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 05, 2006
German eMail Marketer To Float
eCircle, a German email marketing firm, is planning an IPO this year to raise capital for expansion and "selective" acquisitions on the back of achieving a 63 percent growth in sales last year to reach €12.2M and a profit of €2M before tax deductions. Despite its small size, the firm says it will list on the EU-regulated Prime Standard market in Frankfurt. There was no disclosure on the size of the float, nor mandated investment banks.
UPDATE: eCircle is venture-backed. Its investors over the years include Wellington Partners and T-Ventures (the Deutsche Telekom venture arm) and BHF-Bank, as well as private investors.
The company provides direct marketing services such as newsletter send-outs and email (ASP-model), SMS campaigns, permission address lists booking and claims to deliver 300 million emails per quarter for the likes of Standard Life, Vodafone, Thomas Cook, T-Mobile, and MTV.
This startup's business activities, size, and growth rate is very similar to France's Emailvison, which had a successful float in February on the lightly regulated Alternext exchange (part of Euronext). Subsequent to its oversubscribed IPO, about 10 percent of its equity was acquired by Fidelity International.
Read - eCircle AG: Prime Standard angestrebt
Posted at 02:38 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 18, 2006
Klicktel Completes Successful IPO on German Junior Mkt
German telephone listings and directories software publisher, Klicktel, has raised €14.4M in an IPO today on Germany's Entry Standard, the lightly regualted exchange for small and medium sized companies. Some €10M of that will flow to the firm's coffers.
The IPO share price gave it a valuation of €52.7M, which is not bad for a firm that generates annual sales of €16M (in 2005). Its main sources of sales are subscription and software licensing. The new capital will be used to expand the business in its home market, and abroad. It recently introduced navigation and mapping software.
Posted at 04:15 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Eleksen Plans Reverse Merger To Go Public On AIM
UK-based Eleksen is planning a reverse merger to get a listing on the AIM in London in May. The company is expected to have a market capitalisation of approximately £20.4M. Eleksen is a venture-backed developer of electronic fabric technologies that we've written about in recent times. It's best known for a foldable fabric keyboard and providing the technology for jackets with integrated iPod controls.
Read - Eleksen to join AIM through reverse
Posted at 02:00 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 10, 2006
2WayTraffic Float On AIM Buoyant
On Friday 2WayTraffic, a Dutch developer of Interactive TV applications floated on the AIM junior exchange in London, raising £24M to do some acquisitions.
The IPO share price gave it an implied valuation of £106M. Its share price climbed slightly in its first days and is currently trading at a share price that give it a market cap of £112.98M.
Not bad for a two year old company that enables TV viewers to vote on contests, answer quizzes, or find a date using the text messaging (SMS) service on their mobilephone and has to share revenues with the mobile operators as well as the TV broadcasters.
There are several companies in Europe active in this emerging segment. One of them is RedLynx in Finland, which is backed by 3i.
2WayTraffic has a couple of famous founders, which might explain its hefty valuation. Both were part of the team that commissioned and developed the commercially successful reality TV show, Big Brother.
Read - Finnish Interactive TV To Grow
Posted at 03:04 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Internet Exchange With Successful Float On AIM
On the back of its first year of profitability, IXEurope, a Pan European Internet connectivity and datacenter provider, floated on Friday on the AIM, the junior market in London.
It was a successful floation. Its share prices was trading at about 30pence today, implying a valuation of £52.64M. Its placement share price was 22 pence (£38M valuation). The proceeds of the IPO were to be used to pay down some debt and to invest in a new datacenter in London.
IXEurope was founded by Guy Willner and Christophe de Buchet in 1998 who led the company through the boom and bust of the tech bubble. During the downturn, while many of its rivals flopped, IXEurope managed to snap up several datacenters across Europe and now counts Merrill Lynch, Capgemini, Google and France Telecom as customers.
The founders had the backing of Swiss and British business angels, as well as European Acquisition Capital and BA Capital Partners, which are both private equity investors.
Posted at 02:28 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 06, 2006
German IPOs For Magix and SAF
Two software companies braved the capital market in Frankfurt today, the first software IPOs in several years, with share prices at the top end of their bookbuilding range. But in the early hours of trading both share prices fell slightly from their IPO emission price.
A snapshot of the IPO board for SAF
SAF, the smaller of the two companies, develops and sells logistics software. It went out on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange this morning at €17.60 per share at the top end of its bookbuilding range. But its share price shaved a few cents to €17.20 a few hours later.
The firm says its book was 8 times oversubscribed and that it had raised a total €48M, some €20.5M of which is new capital for the company, the rest, some €27.5M will go to old shareholders, including VCs and the founders. SAF is based in Switzerland, was founded in 1996 and employs 50 people.
Last year it posted a net profit of €2M on sales of €7.4M. The new capital will be used to expand customer base internationally. It was backed by New Value, a small Swiss fund, Ventizz, and funds managed by Avida, a German VC fund.
Magix, whose sales are almost 4 times that of SAF's, went out on the same exchange at €16.40 per share. It had fallen by 20cents a share to €16.20 per share by about 11am. (Update: It raised about €87M)
Last year the multimedia software vendor and ASP had sales €27.5M and EBIT of €4.9M. First quarter sales for the current year were €10.9M and EBIT of about €4M.
Read - IPO: SAF-Emission 8,6-fach überzeichnet
Read - Magix IPO takes shape (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 10:16 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 27, 2006
Magix IPO takes shape
More details today from Dow Jones (German) on the upcoming IPO of Magix, a Berlin-based publisher of software to make and edit digital images, videos, and sound files. The scheduled date is April 6th. The alarm:clock euro notes that it is mainly the old shareholders that will benefit from the IPO.
Magix will be the first IPO of an independent software company on the German stock exchange since 2001.
Of the 5.28M shares on offer, only 1.35M reflect an increase in captial, the rest of the capital will go to shareholders, which include 3i. The capital increase proceeds will be used to build up the distribution network, some R&D, and a potential acquisition or two. Magix hopes to sell between €65M to €115 worth of shares.
The roadshow begins on March 27th. Dresdner Bank and Cazenove are the banks mandated to carry out the transaction.
Read - Berlin's Magix Prepares IPO (a:c euro archives)
Read - IPO/Bis zu 5,28 Mio Magix-Aktien kommen an den Markt (vwd)
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March 21, 2006
Loss-making Sandvine completes buoyant IPO
Shares in Sandvine, whose products regulate and control traffic on broadband networks, climbed today on its first day of trading on London's lightly regulated AIM stock exchange. The IPO price of 75 pence gave the firm a valuation of €124M. The share price was up by 25 pence to 100 pence at the time this report was posted.
The equipment vendor, which hails from the same hometown as Blackberry-maker Research in Motion (Waterloo in Canada) raised £20M (€29M) in a placing alongside its IPO. Plus it found new owners for some £5M worth of old shareholders stock.
According to a report on TechFinance Canada, Sandvine was loss-making and had sales of CDN $15.8 million, up from CDN $3.2 million in 2004. Its losses before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization amounted to CDN $3.0 million, down from CDN $6.2 million in 2004.
Sandvine raised $38M from its venture backers, which included Celtic House Venture Partners, a fund that has taken several Canadian telecoms equipment public via the AIM.
Celtic's founder is Terry Matthews, an entrepreneur-turned VC who is well-known in London, which might help to explain why the share offering was so successful. Matthews was born in Wales but made his fortune in Canada after founding several telecoms equipment companies there. He has streets named after him in Canada's capital city and is known as Sir Terry in the UK.
Alongside Celtic, the firm attracted other backers, including VenGrowth Funds, Newbury Ventures, Waterloo Tech Group of Funds, Business Development Bank of Canada Venture Capital.
Read - Sandvine Completes IPO on LSE-AIM
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March 16, 2006
Swiss software biz SAF prepares for IPO
Swisss software company, SAF AG, announced today its intention to float on the Prime Standard stock exchange in Frankfurt within the next few months. The 10 year old firm is specialized in logistics and supply chain software and services.
CEO Andreas von Beringe, along with co-founder Gerhard Arminger, own 60 percent of SAF AG
SAF employs 50 and has annual sales of €7.4M. Net profit was €2M in 2005. The IPO is meant to finance US expansion and development of new market segments in auto and consumer goods sectors, as well as service sectors (banking and finance). It is mainly focused on the import/export sector today.
About 60 percent of SAF is owned by founders Andreas von Beringe and Gerhard Arminger. Top managers and employees own a small stake, and 40 percent of the shares are owned by German and Swiss venture firms, including Ventizz Capital, Techinvest Beteiligungsgesellschaft, PAARL Ventures GmbH and New Value AG. BNP Paribas is the lead bank on the floatation.
Read- Schweizer Software-Unternehmen SAF plant Börsengang
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March 10, 2006
IPO makes all the right moves for UK real estate site
Rightmove, a British online real estate ads site has just completed a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange, raising some £76 M ($132 million), according to Reuters. Its stock price climbed 17 percent on its first day of trading after achieving 35 times oversubscription on its book. The IPO valued the company at £425M.
Reuters drew parallels with floats during the bubble.
“The high demand echoed the IPO of Lastminute.com six years ago -- Britain's most hyped Internet flotation at the time although shares in the online retailer fell below their issue price soon after listing.”--Reuters
It is true that Internet stocks have been doing well in recent IPOs on this side of the Atlantic. Interhyp, an online mortgage broker in Germany also did well. But one big difference between the bubble and now is that both of these firms were profitable and sizable in terms of sales.
One thing is for sure, its new investors didn't value Rightmmove so highly because of its whizz bang web technology.
Rightmove might offer to help find the perfect home, but its website is as quaint and old-fashioned as this country cottage. It takes way too many clicks to browse by region and there is no overview for a quick price comparison.
Read- Rightmove shares rush higher on first day
Read - Best VC exits were in Germany
Posted at 04:04 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
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 at 12:14 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Best exits for Euro VCs were in Germany
The German technology venture market is need of better public relations. Europe’s largest economy has been the region’s largest disappointment for venture capital investors, according to the buzz at VC and tech conferences over here. And yet, Germany delivered three out of four of the best VC exits in Europe last year, namely Tipp24, Interhyp, and Q-Cells, (the a:c euro has some info on the returns for VCs in Apax post). The firms that benefited include 3i Group, Apax Partners, and Earlybird Venture Capital in Hamburg. It’s been a pretty well-kept secret, we have to say.
Secrecy might work for Swiss private banks and startups wanting to gather some stealth-mode cachet but it's not a good idea for those that rely on the public markets for their income.
The Deutsche Börse in Frankfurt gave VCs healthy exits last years
Read - EVCJ Awards - plenty of German VC Exits
Read - Apax homerun on Q-Cells
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January 31, 2006
Apax homerun on Q-Cells IPO
Apax Partners says to Index Ventures, my homerun is bigger than yours. Not to be outdone by Index Ventures and its Skype exit, Apax Partners is putting it out to the press that its IPO of Q-Cells, a solar cell manufacturer, gave it a bigger return than the one Skype delivered on a trade sale to eBay.
Apax, which does buyout and late stage venture investing, told The Independent newspaper in the UK that it made a 27X multiple after holding the investment for a mere 22 months.
Apax's return, Euro 280M (£190M) after costs and net of its original investment, is the largest single capital gain made by a European venture capital firm since the dot.com boom. It beats the $300m (£170M) return Index Ventures made on the $4.1bn sale of Skype to eBay in September.
The article tells us a couple of things.
1) The German IPO market is recovering from its post-bubble near-death experience. (Last year 14 IPOs took place in Germany, two more than took place over the entire three year period before. )
2) The amount that Index Ventures made selling its Skype share was $300M.
3) And that solar energy stocks are hot in Germany.
Solar energy shares are valued highly indeed, although it should be noted that the best post-IPO performance in Germany last year was turned in by Interhyp, an online vendor of mortgages. The second and third best post-IPO performance was turned in by by two solar energy concerns: Conergy and Q-Cells. Another solar energy stock, Solarworld, publicly traded since 1999, saw its share price triple last year.
These kinds of exits for VCs are going to give them a bit more confidence to invest, even in earlier stage ventures. It is worth noting that Interhyp was backed by Hamburg-based Earlybird Ventures which first invested in 1999, with 3i joining in a later round. We hear that the IPO gave 3i Group a 9X return so far, and it still has some stock it can sell at the higher post-IPO price.
Q-Cells has a nice, clean factory for nice, clean energy
Read - Q-Cells sale makes €280m for Apax as tech rises again
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January 25, 2006
Frogster to IP0 on German junior market
PC games distributor and publisher, Frogster Interactive Pictures AG, aims to float on Germany’s lightly regulated Entry Standard stock exchange. It was founded in Berlin in April 2005 by Christoph Gerlinger to acquire Pointsoft Germany GmbH, a five year old publisher and distributor of computer and video games, whose French parent company had gone into insolvency.It plans to sell 325,000 shares. No price yet. But typically IPOs on the Entry Standard raise between Euro 5 mln and 10 mln in new capital.
Gerlinger's name will be familiar if you've followed tech and software IPOs in Germany as he was CFO of CDV-Software-Entertainment, a games developer, when it public in 2001. At the time CDV was best known for a pornographic adventure game called Lula Wet Attack. It also published Sudden Strike and Cossacks titles. In the meantime he was interim country manager Germany at Infogrames Entertainment. Prior to CDV he worked at Psygnosis Deutschland, also a games publisher.
With 100 PC games of various types and price points, Frogster claims to be market leader in its category in Germany and employs 20.
Frogster sells packaged CD games via retail channels but also runs several Internet download sites
Read Frogster plans IPO (In German by Reuters)
Posted at 09:42 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 21, 2006
Online Tire Vendor Delticom Mulls IPO
Who would have thought that selling tires over the Internet could be a Euro 128M ($150M) a year business in Europe? Rainer Binder und Dr. Andreas Prüfer, the founders of Germany's Delticom, that's who. Both are former executives of tiremaker Continental.
The firm recently mandated two investment banks to explore an IPO and "other options" for expansion.
Over the past five years they built Europe's largest online tire sales company. Delticom launched in the US market in December after opening 56 online shops that operate in 25 countries.
The last time we talked to the CEO, he said that the business was “extremely profitable” and he believed that his profit margin is better than Amazon's.
Delticom has raised a mere Euro 3M from DVC Deutsche Venture Capital, of Munich, back in 2000. DVC now owns 10% of the company. About a year ago, Delticom relinquished another small percentage of shares to two German banks to boost "the number and diversity of shareholders", according to Pruefer.
An IPO on the German stock market is one possibility the firm is preparing for, but not the only one. Private equity investors could also provide the founders the kind of capital required. in Europe, buyout houses have been raising record amounts of capital and they are in fierce competition for assets in Germany.
We think it is quite possible that they would offer Delticom a better price for its equity to finance growth plans than the valuation it would get on the public market.
Besides selling tires online, Delticom sells autoparts and oil
Read - Delticom financial results 2005 (Presseportal in German only)
Posted at 09:46 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 09, 2006
Meetic gets lol post-ipo
The lol in the title is the text messaging short form for "lots of love" and part of the name of a new mobile chat and dating service, called superLOL, launched this week by recently floated Meetic.
It is almost three months since Meetic went public on the Euronext stock exchange and the numbers are looking quite good. Its share price is up about 40 percent since and its market cap is slightly over half a billion euros (Euro 556,383,168 ).
Meetic is a founder-driven company, a type that seems to entice European investors these days (see Swiss Tech IPO post here), regardless of whether they are dotcoms or other types of tech companies.
We say founder-driven because the company raised a mere USD 8.7 million in private equity (not VC) money prior to going public and Marc Simonici (headshot here), the founder, retains a large stake post-IPO.
