Week 01/16/2006 through 01/22/2006

Prepared by Capital Hunter analysts

Venture capital investment remained strong this week, as $415 million was raised by 44 companies, marking the fifteenth straight reporting period that VC investment exceeded $300 million. Software was the most popular destination, with 28% of all capital going toward such investments. Life science investments (biotech and medical devices) were also popular, attracting 26% of this week’s capital. Otherwise it was pretty vanilla week, with nothing much else to report, unless you consider the ongoing dilemma with the Ohio Bureau of Worker’s Compensation and the Coingate scandal. (if you haven’t heard about this yet, you can read about it here.

There were four initial public offerings this week, as companies are beginning to test the waters of the public markets again (though admittedly its common for IPOs to fall during the holidays). Before this week, only one company, Lin Energy, a natural gas exploration company which raised over $200 million, had listed in the last three weeks. The four companies that listed are as follows:

Western Refining priced at $382.5 million on the NYSE and is an independent crude oil refiner and marketer of refined petroleum products.

CNX Gas priced at $607.6 million on the NYSE and is an independent energy company exploring, developing, and producing natural gas from the Appalachian Basin.

American Railcar Industries priced at $178.5 million on the NASDAQ and is a manufacturer of covered hopper and tank railcars.

Magyar Bancorp priced at $27.2 million on the NASDAQ and is the New Jersey-charted mutual holding company of Magyar Bancorp, a New Jersey-based savings institution.

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CapitalHunter.com was able to verify that $415 million of venture capital was invested in 44 U.S.-based companies during the past two weeks. The average deal size was approximately 9.43 million. The amount of venture capital invested this period increased by 17% compared to last periods $355 million.

California was once again the largest recipient of venture capital funding this week. Seventeen California companies raised $193.6 million in new equity financing, which accounted for 47% of the total venture capital invested this reporting period. The largest private venture financing in California was placed into IPWireless. IPWireless raised $30 million in Series D financing and is a developer of next-generation broadband and multimedia technology.

The software sector was this reporting period’s most popular destination, with twelve software companies raising $115.75 million in venture financing, which accounted for 28% of the venture capital this period. The largest private venture financing in the software sector this period went into OnVantage. OnVantage raised $18 million in Series B funding and provider of software solutions for corporate spending management.

Start-ups raising their second institutional round of financing represented the largest share of the funding pie, as 30% of all money invested this period went into such companies. The largest private venture financing in the Series B round was placed into SKY MobileMedia. SKY MobileMedia raised $15 million in new equity financing and is a provider of mobile software applications for the mobile handset industry.

The three largest venture deals this period are as follows:

The following eleven companies and other unnamed investors funded the above mentioned top three venture capital investments for $90 million:

A total of 70 equity financings of private and public companies occurred during this reporting period. Each of the 70 equity financings are profiled in a weekly (in this case biweekly) report which include venture financings, private placements, secondary offerings, PIPE’s, and IPO’s.

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