Prepared by Capital Hunter analysts
Venture capital investment remained sluggish this week, as only $325 million was placed in 36 companies, though this represents a small increase over last week’s $309 million. However, one should note that there are some important differences between last week and this week. For starters, a sizable percentage of the companies that received funding last week were early stage startups that received less than $5 million. As you may recall from our last newsletter, the only reason last week's total was over $300 million was due to the $75 million investment Salick Cardiovascular Centers received from Warburg Pincus. There wasn’t nearly as much divergence this week, however, as the largest investment of the week was I4 Commerce with only $27.4 million and nearly half of the companies funded received more than $10 million. In addition, early stage investment accounted for over 75% of last week’s funding, whereas it was just over 50% this week. But the similarities end there. Software investment, the dominant sector last week, was again the week’s big winner, as a third of the $325 million raised this week was placed into such companies, echoing last week's results. Medical device companies also had a strong week, as they combined to bring in over $62 million, which accounted for nearly 19% of this period’s total funding. In fact if you remove Salick from last week’s results, the distribution of funding between the different sectors has remained practically constant the past two weeks.
IPO activity, which surged last week on the back of seven new company listings, fell back down to earth this week, as only two companies listed, both of which are Asian technology companies. The two companies are as follows:
China Grentech Corporation NASDAQ:GRRF priced at
$112.5 million and is a Chinese-based provider of wireless coverage products and services.
Himax Technologies NASDAQ:HIMX priced at
$468 million and is a Taiwan-based producer and marketer of semiconductors used in flat-panel displays.
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