Something Ventured: IPO Dreams A Reality?
“Well you can do something,
Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer.” When venture capitalists go to bed at night, and their dreams are good, they dream of the initial public offering. Night sweats, sudden awakenings and plain old nightmares come more often, so it’s nice when a happy place is reached, soothing the crusty buy-side vultures. Yes, the IPO. Where riches are made and new funds follow. Sure, the M&A route has been very positive for some of the investments. Look around BC: Abatis, MDI, Crystal Decisions to name a few good acquisitions. But the IPO is where the real money is: Aspreva, Creo, Sierra Wireless, Pivotal, Ballard, QLT, Angiotech and Xantrex to name some lucrative ones.
I
wrote last year about the AIM market in
First, look to the A quick scan of the US filings shows that most of these company’s did $20-40M in revenue in fiscal 2006 and have pretty good growth trajectories. The exception is biotechnology and alternative energy companies that have very little or no revenue and are still getting market traction based on their potential.
In Dragonwave - Raising $30M on $20M 2006 revenue Genesis Worldwide - Just filed, had $20M in 2006 revenue Hostopia - Raising $25M with $18M in 2006 revenue RuggedCom - Raising $40M with $30M in 2006 revenue Datacom Wireless - Raising $10M with $7.2M in 2006 revenue AlterNRG - Raising $30M with no revenue Espial - Raising $25M with $10.6M in 2006 revenue
Consonus -
Raising $20M (co-listing on
A
couple of these jump out at you if you are a Canadian
technology company growing to double digit millions of
revenue.
Datacom Wireless out of Currently in our neighbourhood there are a few companies that fit the bill already or will soon as an IPO candidate, especially if these desirable conditions hold up. It might be time to talk to the bankers and see if your company fits the bill. Of course, in this frothy capital market, private equity is still the biggest driver of shareholder liquidity. Although the IPO may be the dream exit for your early investors, the partial or complete buyout by private equity firms is also very real today. Technology companies have had a harder time getting the attention of the private equity folks, but that situation is also changing. I talked about the dearth of investment capital at the early stage a few weeks ago. I suggested that the only short term fix for this was successful exits to help attract US capital. It seems the table is setting itself for some near term successful exits, either through IPO, buyout or the ever present M&A route. I like BC’s chances of some near term exits. It makes for nice dreams. Let’s hope we see the results soon. Letters From Last Time: Judy Bishop and I have written about the e-mail overload problem and it generated, well, a lot of e-mail. I’d like to think it was productive use of the technology to let me know what you thought of the issue. I think that e-mail’s utility (we call it the killer application of the Internet) is well established. Like any technology it will grow and change to meet new needs and new uses. But most of you correctly said that, like anything addictive, the user must consume it wisely and not become a slave to it. Rather than post the responses, I thought I’d end this meme with these thoughts and move on. What Do You Think? Talk Back To Brent Holliday Something Ventured is a bi-weekly column designed to supplement the T-Net British Columbia web site with some timely, relevant and possibly irreverent insight into the industry. I hope to share some of the perspective and trends that I see in my role as a VC. The column is always followed by feedback (if its positive or constructive. I'll keep the flames to myself, thanks). Something Ventured Archive Printable edition |
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