Week 04/10/2006 through 04/16/2006

Prepared by Capital Hunter analysts

Venture capitalists, flush with readily available cash, have been on a tear the past few weeks, as weekly investment totals have been through the proverbial roof. Companies seeking funding this week raised a whopping $583 million, up nearly 15% from last week’s robust $513 million. The biggest reason(s) for the jump this week is due to a couple of abnormally large telecom investments. Amp’d Mobile, a mobile communications provider for teenagers and young professionals, raised an additional $150 million in third round funding, which brings the total amount raised by the company to over a quarter billion dollars since August of 2005. Another telecommunications company, Arcadian Networks, a provider of broadband wireless solutions to the utilities industry, raised $85 million from Goldman Sachs and Gilo Ventures. Together these companies accounted for over 40% of the week’s funding, which helped telecom investment to its highest weekly level since the apex of the dot-com era.

In other news, software, usually the most popular (along with biotechnology) sector for venture investment, managed to garner only 7% of the week’s funding, the lowest such total since 2005. Medical device investment was also down, as only $38 million placed into three companies, and $30 million of that amount was invested in a single company, AngioScore. Biotechnology investment remained strong, however, with over $100 million invested into such companies, accounting for almost 20% of the week’s funding. Other industries, such as networking equipment, consumer services, healthcare services, industrials, and business services received negligible investment.

IPO activity was relatively modest this week, with only three companies listing. The three companies are as follows:

JK Acquisition Corporation AMEX:JKA-U priced at $58 million and is a blank-check company looking to acquire another company.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals NASDAQ:VNDA priced at $57.5 million and is a provider of pharmaceuticals and therapeutics for central nervous system disorders.

Targacept NASDAQ:TRGT priced at $45 million and is also a developer of drugs and therapeutics targeting the central nervous system.

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CapitalHunter.com was able to verify that $583 million of venture capital was invested in 37 U.S.-based companies during the past week. The average deal size was approximately 15.76 million. The amount of venture capital invested this period increased by 14% compared to last periods $513 million.

California was the largest recipient of venture capital funding this week. Nineteen California companies raised a whopping $357.77 million in new equity financing, which accounted for 62% of the total venture capital invested this reporting period. The largest private venture financing in California was placed into the earlier mentioned Amp’d Mobile. Amp’d Mobile raised $150 million in Series C financing from a consortium of investors including Intel, Qualcomm, MTV, Universal Music Group, Redpoint Ventures, and Tudor Investments among others and is a provider of mobile communications services to the youth market.

The aforementioned telecommunications sector raised the most venture capital this reporting period, with four (yes, only four) companies raising $270.9 million in venture financing, which accounted for 45% of the venture capital this period, the same as last week. The largest private venture financing in the telecom sector this period was, yup, you guessed it, Amp’d Mobile.

Start-ups raising their Series C rounds of financing represented the largest share of the funding pie, as 32% of all money invested this period went into such companies. The largest such financing was placed into Amp’d Mobile.

The three largest venture deals this period are as follows:

The following twenty companies and other unnamed investors funded the above mentioned top three venture capital investments for $265 million:

A total of 77 equity financings of private and public companies occurred during this reporting period. Each of the 77 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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