Convisual IPO – 7 days later
Last Friday, German-based Convisual went public (Lightreading). The company is in the business of wholesaling entertainment content to mobile operatos. I was curious on how the stock would do, and have been surprised by the strong uptick. (Yahoo quote)
Given conventional VC wisdom, an IPO is an extremely lucrative way to exit an investment and achieve liquidity. If the VCs manage to get the “tenbagger” (i.e. a ten times return on their investment), it’s quite often through this type of exit. In the US, being a public company is an expensive thing (due to reulations such as Sarbanes Oxley), so only fairly large companies typically take the leap.
Yet, Convisual is one of a new crowd of smaller companies using alternative European marketplaces as a means to raise comparatively modest amounts of capital. With 2005 revenues of Euro €~9M, the company raised about €5M of expansion capital, with the market cap now hovering in the €15-20M range.
Typically, you would have considered a €5M raise to be the business of private investors, normally venture capitalists. It’s interesting to see that this company chose a different path, and given how the stock trades it seems to have worked well for them. I wonder whether we will see more of these small IPOs in the future at the alternative markets in places Frankfurt, Stuttgart and London. And I am still uncertain how public investors feel about having to evaluate small companies with a modest amount of operating history (and capital) as well as probably very limited analyst coverage, but that’s for the markets to answer.
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