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Applied Materials purchase of HCT Shaping Systems SA
As is the norm in private equity culture, the least said the better. Montagu Private Equity certainly adhered to that when it agreed to the sale of HCT Shaping Systems SA to Applied Materials, Inc. Without revealing much of the detail – other than saying that it is the majority shareholder of the company – but when you exit a portfolio company to a publicly held company like Applied Materials, the cat is going to come out of the bag sooner or later. The rest of this article provides The Chilli’s analysis of why Applied Materials is paying such a high price in hard cash, HCT’s estimated multiples and what market attributes were the driving force behind this sale. Read more here.
European Q1 VC flat at €1.07 billion
Coming off the strong growth made in 2006, venture capital investment into European companies flattened in the first quarter, with €1.07 billion invested in 207 deals, according to the quarterly European Venture Capital Report released by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young. Compared year-on-year, both capital and deal flow decreased 11 percent from the first quarter of 2006. The first quarter found investors renewing their interest in information technology, which showed signs of a significant comeback, and 40 percent of the rounds in the first quarter were later-stage rounds, the largest percentage since 1999. Click here to read more.
Tenison EDA acquisition by ARC – The Chilli perspective
Since September 2003, when Tenison EDA was profiled by The Chilli under our Due Diligence series, the company had been steadily gaining traction throughout Europe and US, having secured strategic deals with ARM, ARC, Broadcom, Conexant and ST Micro. Now, ARC International has announced the acquisition of Tenison EDA, for consideration of £1 million ( $2 million) in cash. The Chilli presents a post-exit analysis click here.
E-Synergy to manage new Emerald Fund for university research projects
Early stage investment specialist E-Synergy has been appointed to manage the new £1.25 million Emerald II Proof of Concept Fund to support London university research spin-outs. The fund will look at projects from nine of London’s universities, and follows Emerald I, which awarded nearly £800k to more than 50 proposals with strong commercial potential for the creative and technology industries. The fund’s purpose is to bridge the funding gap between the completion of a research programme and commercial exploitation. Read more here.
Optics market boost with Ericsson high capacity IPTV
Ericsson has upgraded its high-performance gigabit passive optical network (GPON) system with one of the highest switch capacity – now being able to switch bandwidth up to 320Gbps for commercial and residential next-generation multimedia services. Fibre optic technology and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments are becoming an increasingly important part of access networks capable of delivering cutting-edge services such as IPTV and other IP-based multimedia services. The increased capacity enables the move from multi-casted (one-to-many) to uni-casted (one-to-one) broadband connections. Read more here.
picoChip closes growth round funding of $27 million
UK-based picoChip has secured $27 million of new investment in fourth round funding led by Highland Capital Partners together with undisclosed key strategic investors as well as existing investors. This is picoChip’s largest round to date, which reaffirms the company’s leadership in advanced wireless markets with its WiMAX, HSPA and femtocell products. The round brings total company funding to $70.5 million and delivers a significant boost for picoChip towards extending its success as the only semiconductor company focussed on wireless infrastructure. Read more here.
Live biofuel base stations launched in India
Indian mobile operator Idea Cellular, Ericsson and the GSM Association’s development fund have announced that four mobile base stations for rural India will be powered by locally produced biofuels. All four locations in the state of Maharashtra are greenfield sites that have not previously had access to a mobile network and are located in areas with unreliable power supply. The live mobile base stations follow assessment of different sources of oil for biodiesel production and establishment of a local supply chain. Click here to read more.
Braveheart invests £320,000 in Spiral Gateway
Technology commercialisation and investment management company Braveheart has made an investment of £320,000 into Spiral Gateway Ltd. via its Alpha EIS Fund – making this the group’s second round of funding into the company. Investors in the Alpha fund include the Bank of Scotland Corporate and Scottish Enterprise. A spin-out from the University of Edinburgh, Spiral Gateway is a semiconductor company whose business model is to sell microchips based on its reconfigurable instruction cell array (RICA) technology. For more information, click here.
Seven million USPTO patents: how long did that take?
Earlier this year, the Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) marked an important milestone in its history with the one-millionth web-based trademark application using the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS). But did you also know another milestone – reaching seven million patents issued by the office – was reached last year and while the first million took 75 years to reach, the last million (ie, getting from six million to seven million) took just over six years? Read more here.
Small banks profit from relationship lending
Market valuations of smaller publicly-held banks are higher than they would otherwise be due to their investment in relationship lending, according to a study issued by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The study examined the link between market valuation and small business lending for 817 publicly-held banking organisations during the period 1994 through 2005. Read more here.
GSMA studies potential of embedded mobile broadband
The GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade association for mobile operators, is to collaborate with Microsoft and 13 mobile operators on a global research programme to determine consumer user trends and the mass market potential of notebook PCs with embedded mobile broadband (mobile services delivered using HSPA, Wideband-CDMA or EDGE air interface technologies). Click here to read more.
Electronic shelf display (ESL) to lead small display market
While mobile phones are the dominant driving force in the small/medium display industry, other applications and markets beyond handsets offer attractive growth opportunities for suppliers of diminutive screens. Display manufacturers are looking to numerous emerging applications to help expand their businesses and hopefully to lessen their revenue dependence upon mobile phones. Click here to read more.
OLED shipments will make a small mark in TV market
Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology will make minor inroads into the television market dur¬ing the next few years. Now mainly relegated to mobile-phone displays, OLED-TV shipments will reach 1.2 million units in 2012. One challenges for OLEDs in the television market is the large number of competitive technologies. Click here to read more.
Some things you might not have known…
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