Prepared by Capital Hunter analysts
As is normally the case during holiday weeks, companies and venture capital firms reported fewer financings, as only $327 million was invested across 29 companies, a drop of nearly 26% from the previous period’s $439 million. Despite the funding drop some strange occurrences happened that you don’t normally see on a weekly basis. For one thing if you look at the region chart below you will notice that California was not the largest recipient of last week’s funding; that honor belongs to Texas, which had (only) two companies, microRNA diagnostics provider Asuragen and energy machinery manufacturer Vector International, each raise a large amount of money from their private equity backers. Asuragen, a spin-off from Ambion focusing on oncology-based molecular diagnostics and molecular biology services, raised $49 million in Series A financing from blue-chip VC firms Telegraph Hill Partners and Growth Capital Partners to continue their research into cancer detection tools. The other company, Vector International, a provider of flanges and piping equipment to the oil & gas industries, raised $36 million in new equity financing from private equity firms HitecVision Private Equity and Four Seasons Ventures in order to continue expansion. Another anomaly that occurred this period was the reversal of funding diversity between the different sectors. Whereas past weeks had a (roughly) growing egalitarian distribution between the different sectors, this week was heavily concentrated in venture capitalists favorite two sectors, biotechnology and software. With the exception of the industrial & energy sector, which consisted solely of Vector International, sectors that weren’t software or biotechnology received either piddling amounts of money or none at all. In fact the three largest financings of the week were all in the biotechnology sector, the first time that has happened since before we can remember. Though it is extremely unlikely that this period constitutes the start of a trend, the anomalies are none the less interesting.
Unlike last period, which had Vonage and MasterCard raising in excess of half a billion, five companies went public this period, though none of them raised over $500 million. The largest IPO this period was CTC Media, a Russian television network that raised close to $350 million. The five companies (including CTC) that went public last week are as follows:
CTC Media
NASDAQ:CTCM priced at $345.9 million and is an operator of a Russian television network.
Town Sports International Holdings
NASDAQ:CLUB priced at $116.4 million and is an operator of fitness clubs in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic segments of the United States.
Luna Innovations
NASDAQ:LUNA priced at $21 million and is a developer of next-generation molecular and sensing technology.
HD Partners Acquisition
AMEX:HDP.U priced at $150 million and is a blank check company looking to acquire assets in the media, telecommunications or entertainment sectors.
Alphatec Holdings
NASDAQ:ATEC priced at $83.7 million and is a provider of medical technology for the surgical treatment of spine disorders.
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