Londion-based computer security company BullGuard has received US$5 million (£3.4 million) from international venture capital firm DFJ ePlanet Ventures. The company has said it plans to use the funding to expand into Germany as well as hiring a new channel sales director for the UK.
More on this story from GrowthBusiness.co.uk
SCOTTY Group has announced it has won €1 million (£830,000) of new orders.
The AIM-quoted company – which turned a £765,000 loss into £977,000 pre-tax profits in the year to June, on turnover up 42 per cent to £6.8 million – says latest orders include five maritime ‘Telemed’ packages for an onboard hospital for the German Navy, aircraft tracking kit for the German Army and emergency response equipment for the Chinese national railways.
SCOTTY shares, which have fallen sharply from their 103.75p June peak, now trade at 49p, valuing the company at £9.9 million.
News that Illumix has received £1.5 million in venture capital funding in order to set up a technical centre in the North-east of England.
The company’s technology aims to help large corporations with complex IT infrastructures to more accurately align IT resources with business requirements.
Chief technology officer Andrew Parker said: In many cases, businesses are supporting expensive legacy IT platforms that could be greatly optimised in terms of performance and operating costs.’
A new report from Datamonitor says that Technology vendors could shortly find themselves up against it, with IT budget growth expected to slow in 2009.
Datamonitor based their report on a survey of 8,000 global IT ‘decision-makers’. 37 per cent said that they were expecting to see their IT budget increase in 2009. Half stated that they expect to their budget to stay the same in 2009.
The exception, however, was the healthcare sector, where the majority of healthcare industry respondents (57 per cent) said they plan to expand their IT expenditure in 2009.
Sight and Sound Technology, a supplier of IT services for people who are blind or have learning difficulties, has completed a buy-in management buy-out (BIMBO). The deal was backed by Midlands-based venture capitalist Catapult Venture Managers, which invested £1.45 million, with senior debt from The Co-operative Bank.
Here’s a list of the top ten IT focused companies* in the annual Fortune 500 list. Rankings are based on 2007 total revenues.
$104.3 bn
$98.8 bn
$61.1bn
$51.1bn
$46.7bn
$40.4bn
$38.3bn
$38.1bn
$34.9bn
$27.6bn
* Companies that derive the majority of their revenue from sales of information technology products or services. Excluded are technology product distributors, electronic component makers, telecoms companies and mobile phone manufacturers.
Glasgow-based venture capitalist Pentech has raised £45 million for its latest fund, which will invest in software companies in the UK and Ireland. The fund will back businesses with global potential in the enterprise software, telecoms software, internet and mobile sectors.
More info at Growth Business…
Plastic Logic, which develops plastic electronics for flexible displays and sensors, has raised a new round of $50 million (£25 million) in equity finance led by existing venture capital investors Oak Investment Partners and Amadeus Capital Partners. To date, the company has raised more than $200 million.
More details at Growth Business UK
An interesting discussion over at the Daily Telegraph, where Ben Bland has a pop at AIM and comes to the conclusion it’s a bit of a circus.
The London Stock Exchange has been struggling to shake off the suggestion by a leading US regulator that Aim is “like a casino” ever since those fateful words were uttered. After spending the best part of a year covering Aim, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is really more like a circus than a casino.
Some responses say he has missed the point of AIM or ignored its fundamental proposition. But I encourage you to check the article out
AIM-listed website designer and developer IS Solutions has agreed to buy Surrey-based Chapter26, a content management systems specialist.
According to the GrowthBusiness website, the deal will cost IS Solutions more than £700,000 in cash and shares, rising to £1.2 million if financial targets are achieved by July 2009.
Geneva based Neo Media has subscribed for £300,000 of convertible loans in bombed out digital screen media company Avanti Screenmedia.
AIM-quoted Avanti lost £5.6 million (plus another £25 million on disposals) in the year to June 2007 and a further £2.5 million in the six months to December. Last November, the London-based company raised £987,000 in shares and convertibles at 7p and in December it tapped the market for another £150,000 at the same price.
More details at Growth Comapny Investor
Google’s latest quarterly results have been posted and the SmoothSpan blog has some interesting comments on its article: Google Anti-Gravity Ray is Fading
Information Age magazine has highlighted a couple of tech-related nuggets from the latest M&S annual report
The UK’s most famous retailer has earmarked £450 million for IT spending over the next three years in a bid to push into international and online markets and ease its reliance on the ailing UK retail environment.
“We’re planning to take more control of our logistics from source to store, allowing us to monitor our stock more efficiently and improve margins,” the report said.
The report also revealed the company’s motivation for this IT focus – it’s online business, M&S Direct, grew 70% over the year (making £300 million in sales), while international sales grew 16% bringing in £713 million.
From the online edition of Growth Business news of a shake up at Securstore, the online back-up and recovery business with data centres in the UK and Iceland.
Orn Gunnarsson is the new CEO – he stepped down recently as managing director at Saga Capital Investment Bank – replacing Alexander Eiriksson, who will become the company’s chief operating officer.
Bjarni Armannson has become a new non-exec. He is a director of US private equity firm Paine & Partners.
Both are taking a 25% stake in the business.
On the 1st anniversary of Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang’s resumption as chief executive, the founders of Flickr, the photo sharing website, are being reported as preparing to quit the parent company in the latest exodus of senior managers at the internet search giant.
Husband and wife team Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake will hand in their ‘purple badges’ in July. This follows Monday’s exit of Jeff Weiner, the executive vice president of Yahoo!’s network division and the announcement by veteran developer Jeremy Zawodny that he plans to leave Yahoo! on his blog last week.
Yahoo! acquired Flickr for $35m in March 2005
The Key Revolution is a technology developer that has a product allowing nomadic computer users to work from any machine without leaving traces behind them. Its main product is a USB key with an embedded SIM card and PIN protection that allows users to access standard Windows applications, browse the internet, and collaborate in a secure environment. The company’s management team consists of former employees of Vodafone, which holds a patent on the technology and is a shareholder in the company. The chief executive is Adrian Burholt.
According to GrowthBusiness.co.uk, the Key Revolution has secured a £1.25 million from Octopus Ventures via its Titan VCTs. Octopus has announced that it had received a ‘substantial’ holding in the company in return for its investment.
The product commenced beta testing with paying customers in February and a full launch is anticipated later this summer.
Wireless electronics group Filtronic plc has attracted the attentions of US private equity player Carlyle Group - and the markets are interested.
Prompted by an up-tick in fully listed Filtronic’s share price, Carlyle has said it is ‘reviewing its options’ in respect of Filtronic (LSE: FTC), which ‘could include an offer’. Filtronic shares, which slumped from 291.5p to 59.5p between 2005 and earlier this month, have perked up to 77.5p on Carlyle’s expression of interest, at which level the company is valued at £57.2 million.
Released in the UK late last month, Wii Fit is now ranking fifth in the top ten game sales for the week.
And now, from the USA we have the first general sales data coming in confirming the $90 unit’s stateside popularity too. Just days after launch, Amazon.com has had to restock and has announced on the product page that it was waiting for more supply from Nintendo Co. Other important online retailers such as Best Buy, Circuit City Stores Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have had to do the same.
Other non-official reports are claiming 650,000 units on its first day, with an estimate of 1.2 million by the end of the first week. While this isn’t as good as the record achieved by Rockstar’s GTA 4 over the same time frame, it would certainly be a terrific result.
There are approx 10 million Wii owners in the US compared to a combined 16 million PS3 and Xbox 360 owners.
In Nintendo’s home market of Japan the Wii Fit has sold 2 million units since its release last year.
The online auction site QXL is shutting its doors.
As of May 9 it will not accept any more listings. After May 30th it closes. And so it ends. Or not. Because this news only applies to the UK.
In December 2007 QXL was sold for £946m (at £18 per share) to Naspers, a subsidiary of a media company based in South Africa, and changed its name to Tradus. And Tradus is still operating. In Eastern Europe it’s a real brand: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland and Ukraine all do QXL. In March 2008, Tradus also acquired Moonfish Media, which operates online auction and classified businesses in Estonia and Lithuania. QXL Ricardo of Poland is exceptionally strong.
So, in many markets where English is not the automatic second language the QXL auction will continue. What a strange life this web brand has had.
Online Fashion Retailer EBTM has confirmed a first annual pre-tax profit for yearly trading. Chief executive Richard Breeden says the company, which lost £661,570 in the year to April 2007 on £1.3 million turnover, will ‘report a maiden full-year profit before tax’ for 2007/08.
The London-based, AIM-quoted company, which wholesales on the internet, paid £4.75 million in cash and shares last June for the ‘complementary’ Lowlife clothing and accessories brand.
Electronic communications systems specialist Intelek (AIM: ITK) is reporting that underlying profits will ‘comfortably’ exceed market expectations.
The AIM-quoted company, which made £5.6 million pre-tax profit in the year to March 2007 on £37 million turnover, supplies electronic systems for satellite and microwave communications, as well as precision parts for the aerospace market, reports progress throughout its divisions.
Based in Swindon, Intelek, increased ‘underlying’ pre-tax profits 45 per cent to £1.48 million in the six months to September and now says ‘strong trading’ continued throughout the financial year to last month.
A bright light stock during these dark days. Worth looking over.
GrowthBusiness.co.uk is reporting that Edinburgh-based computer processing technology developer Spiral Gateway has secured over £700,000 of funding from a consortium headed by technology-focused financier Braveheart.
Braveheart was joined in the syndicate by Imperial Innovations, Bank of Scotland Corporate and the Scottish Co-investment Fund.
Spiral’s core product helps computers to process multimedia, wireless and broadband tasks. It aims to incorporate its technology on to silicon chips and will initially target the image signal processing market, a function required in every camera-enabled mobile phone.
Founded in 2004, the company was a tech spin-out from Edinburgh University. It has a licence with the institution for the rights to its reconfigurable instruction cell architecture technology. It recently released a silicon-based prototype of the technology to market its product to the image signal processing market.
It’s been a slow start on the AIM and Plus Markets for IPOs in 2008, in single digits monthly and only a couple of tech start-ups amongst them.
And it appears that over the pond in Silicon Valley the same slowdown is taking place – just one in the first quarter – ArcSight (ARST), which makes security and compliance software. For the same period last year the score was nine startups.
Where IPO is stagnant M&A seems to be taking up some of the slack, but this is displacement activity. Everyone knows there is a whole heap of ideas waiting for take-off but until the money men sort themselves out it would seem we’re all just going to have to keep surfing youtube for kitteh videos.
NVM Private Equity has backed the management buy-out (MBO) of Coventry-based telecoms network provider Optilan. The firm has invested more than £5 million in the MBO, which is led by Optilan’s CEO and co-founder Richard Buckland.
Optilan designs, installs and maintains telecoms systems for the oil and gas, transport, power and utilities industries. These are sectors with long lead-time for investments and where markets remain relatively strong. A good combination.
The company has 200 employees, the majority of whom are engineering and technical staff, and satellite offices in Moscow and Qatar.
In addition, news that NVM has exited Technology for Business, a Hampshire-based provider of IT systems for law firms.
Growth Business Investor is reporting that PAQ International has raised £1 million on AIM.
PAQ is a Chinese manufacturer of own-brand bags for mobile phones and laptops. The company also supplies its products to companies such as luggage brand Samsonite and French supermarket Leclerc. The funding is earmarked to help move the company further into the retail retail outlets inside or close to major electronics stores.
Chief executive Kelvin Yau saying that they hope to acquire other manufacturing and distribution businesses in China, as well as developing a retail business in territories including China and the UK. The company intends to position its
Nomad and broker Zimmerman Adams led the fundraising, with Hichen Harrison’s assistance as co-broker.
The company’s audited turnover for 2006 was HK$22.4 million (£1.4 million) with operating profits of HK$10.0 million.
An interesting discussion over at samizdata.net on the financial illiteracy of the Financial Times newspaper.
Much like the situation at The Economist paper, at times you just want to tear your hair out and gnash your teeth in a biblical manner at some of the editorial. In one particular way The Economist is worse since its whole raison d’etre is supposedly to defend free market economics against regressive government intervention.
As one astute commentator at Samizdata says:
The economy is none of the state’s business.
The way the state can help the economy is very simple:
1. Maintain order and property rights (police/law courts)
2. see 1.
Any questions?
Surfing around the tech gadgets pages of Growth Business I came across the Les Paul Robot Guitar – a guitar that automatically tunes itself!
US electric guitar manufacturer Gibson can turn all six pegs to standard tuning simultaneously at the touch of a button and also gives players access to six commonly used alternative tuning presets.
Apparently, the guitar ‘talks you through’ the entire process. Whoa!
Production is on a limited run, it comes in a ‘Blue Silverburst Nitrocellulose Finish’ (nice…) and is priced at approximately £1,400 – or £1,200 at the new global CFD rate.
Mobile computing systems specialist Belgravium Technologies has lifted annual pre-tax profits 11 per cent to £2 million despite falling turnover. The Bradford-based company had warned last year that customers were becoming more cautious and cutting their capital expenditure and it saw turnover fall 2.9% to £10.6m in the year to December 31. However it improved its pre-tax profits to £2.05m from £1.84m last time thanks to contributions from its Touchstar and Novo businesses.
Chairman John Kembery said the profit growth demonstrated its world leading status in mobile computing systems for logistics and retail markets. “These results demonstrate the inherent strengths within our market leading business and we look forward to the opportunities in the year ahead.” Fair dues to the man and the co. who have produced good figures against a backdrop of heightening global economic uncertainty.
Belgravium is a computer design and manufacturing company, specialising in the mobile computing and Radio Frequency Data Communications (RF/DC) market areas.
Big news this week in the electronic and video games sector is the Electronic Arts Inc. bid for Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., owner of the GTA (Grand Theft Auto) franchise – a bid that has now gone hostile.
EA took its $26-per-share offer directly to Take-Two shareholders and the tender offer expires on April 11, only two weeks or so before the latest “Grand Theft Auto” hits store shelves. GTA is one the game world’s killer series, it has sold over 65 million copies and is considered one of the most successful video games in history. It’s also New York based Take-Two’s main source of revenue and expected to bring in as much as $1.4 billion this fiscal year.
EA’s chief executive, John Riccitiello, said timing is crucial for the deal. “We are counting on being able to achieve revenue synergies by the holidays,” he said in an interview. EA wants to use its marketing prowess to sell more of Take-Two’s games in the winter shopping season, when video game companies make the most of their money.
Take-Two’s two largest shareholders, Oppenheimer Funds and FMR LLC, have substantially reduced their stakes in the company recently, a sign they may not expect the bid to go higher, and have taken their money and run. A few analysts have said the offer could increase, but there appears to be a limit at $27 (note that the $26-per-share bid was nearly 50 percent above Take-Two’s stock price before EA’s bid became public in February).
Take-Two has said the offer doesn’t value the company’s creative talents (including GTA’s creator Rockstar Games) and its management’s turnaround efforts after Chairman Strauss Zelnick and CEO Ben Feder took over in early 2007 following a shareholder coup prompted by financial and legal troubles.
But whether said talents make it worth more than $2 billion is moot. Not from City Chap’s perspective it ain’t.
EA’s offer for Take-Two follows Vivendi SA’s plan to buy Activision Inc., its biggest rival. That deal is expected to close in the first half of this year, creating a publishing powerhouse that incorporates the “World of Warcraft,” series, the world’s biggest multiplayer online game.
One week in a relatively quiet Meribel, with decent snow to boot, and city chap has returned home a battered, but fresh, person.
A contact who had arrived from the Geneva bio-energy exhibition proudly explained how he had driven over using an adapted bio-diesel Audi and that an average 54 mph total trip meant that he had reduced his carbon footprint by x percent. This was surely an impressive feat I thought, as the chairlifts, piste bashers, cable cars, ski-boot heaters, terrace-heaters, Mercedes-Benz vans and Russian-owned Hummers geared their way about me.
Much more impressive was his new piece of tech kit – some Walkie Talkie Doro Ski Kit phones. These babies have a 6km range and operate via throat-mics, which allow you to communicate using the vibrations from your voice-box – this means that even in windy or adverse conditions you can still be heard clearly. I also like the voice activation mode and the PTT button that could be attached to a ski pole. Very neat. Communication is free, so no more expensive calls trying to get everyone in the group back to the same mountain restaurant, and no licence is needed. There are 8 selectable channels and 38 sub codes to each channel which gives over 300 different channel combinations – so decent privacy if you’re a Russian oligarch.
So I looked up Doro and here’s the company I found: DORO Sverige AB – ticker: DORO – STO Exchange – principal activities are the development, manufacture and marketing of communications equipment, such as telephone instruments, cordless telephones, switchboards, telephone answering machines and other equipment. The Group operates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia, Hong Kong and Poland.
London-based Advent Ventures has joined in the latest Series D funding round at Wisair, a California-based developer of “dongles”, which allow devices such as computer keyboards, digital cameras and laptops to communicate with each other wirelessly. The round completed $24 million (£12.2 million).
Other new investors in this round are US private equity group Susquehanna Growth Equity, 40-year-old Japanese VC firm Yasuda Ventures, and Bridge Capital Fund of Japan, an affiliate fund of Tokyo-based investor Nikko antfactory. Wisair, whose technology allows data transfer at speeds of up to 480 megabits per second within a ten-metre radius, has already received $48 million in previous fundraisings. This latest round brings the total now invested in the company to $72 million. Existing venture capital investors include semiconductor specialist Broadcom, private equity giant Apax Partners, and Intel Capital, the investment arm of the US technology group.
Martin McNair, general partner at Advent, says his firm will be helping Wisair find technology partners in Europe.
Growth Company Investor is reporting very good news from Scottish software company Craneware, whose products help US hospitals optimise billing.
After doubling interim profits to £820,000 pre-tax the company, whose £5.4 million AIM floatation last September was judged IPO of the Year at Growth Company Investor’s recent Quoted Company Awards, increased turnover 24 per cent to £4.35 million in the six months to December. Craneware also announced an increase in its US hospital client list by 96 to 878 on the strength of its flagship product, Chargemaster Toolkit.
HQ is in West Lothian and there are offices in Florida, Arizona and Kansas.
Ever since reading the famous ‘Hacker Tourism’ guide by Neal Stephenson titled Mother Earth Mother Board the business of fibre optics, cable laying and data transportation have been fascinating to City Chap.
In the 1990s Colt Telecom Group plc was one of the first companies to start digging up our roads and installing fibre optic cable to compete with BT in the business telecoms market.
Interesting news then that when Colt plc announced its first ever full financial year profits last week – after a wait of 15 years mind – the main driver of growth in the company was also reported to be from its data offerings (+9.8% growth in turnover) whilst revenues from voice calls continued to decline (-19%). So less telecoms, per se, and more ‘Net Coms’.
Pre-Tax Profit = £29.6 miillion – 12 months to December 31st 2007
Turnover = £130 million
No dividend was announced.
Venture capitalist Ingenious Media Active Capital (IMAC) has invested a further £2 million in TV production company Whizz Kid Entertainment, a company it has a 50% stake in. This follows the initial investment of £2.25 million in June 2006, when the company was launched by CEO Malcolm Gerrie.
The money is earmarked for the acquisition of a controlling stake in Precious Media, a ‘content exploitation’ specialist which aims to increase profits for content rights holders through strategies such as distribution through multiple outlets and securing sponsorship. Precious is interesting because it was one of the first companies to properly tackle the new distribution paradigm for multimedia content – where digital download and viewing on demand from multiple platforms is (or soon will be) king. The company develops formats and programmes for a full range of digital platforms, from mobile and VOD to IPTV and Pay-per-View and distributes them to broadcasters
IMAC, invests primarily in unquoted media and entertainment companies. Its parent company, Ingenious Media, both advises and invests in the media sector through various subsidiaries. Whizz Kid produces programmes in genres including television, entertainment, factual entertainment, events and music. The company has produced events including the Orange British Academy Film Awards, the BAFTA TV Awards, and Elton John’s 60th birthday concert.
Bombed-out AIM company Synchronica (AIM: SYNC) has raised £2 million – only one month after saying it had ‘sufficient cash to meet its present needs’. Cough, cough. Its 2007 report showed losses halved at £3 million and it had previously reported raising £1.87 million at 6.25p in a prior issue.
The mobile communications specialist latest shares placement was at 7p through broker Seymour Pierce – cash which is earmarked to expand its sales and marketing operations in emerging markets that lack elaborate existing communications networks. Markets where attaching email capability to simple mobile phones could be big business. Operative word here is ‘could’.
Founder and chief executive officer Carsten Brinkschulte argues Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway 3.5 ‘push’ email and synchronisation software is ‘geared to the specific requirements of emerging markets and can deliver email to more than three billion phones worldwide’.
Brinkschulte contributed £20,000 to the latest placing. He has been trying to steer Synchronica back to health since it lost its way within ill-starred mobile services venture DAT Group.
August 2007 saw some positive news when Synchronica won a potentially lucrative contract with Sun Microsystems whilst more recently the company agreed an international marketing JV with Miami-based Brightstar, a leading distributor to mobile systems.
Originally floated at 130p back in 2004, the shares had topped out at 530p before collapsing all the way to 6.88p by June 2007. Mid-market today they were trading at 7.5p.
Recommendation: Very Speculative
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