Q-News
September 2010
Posted in Private Equity
After a strong July in which we saw 12 financings and a reported figure
of $78 million in new capital invested in private Canadian companies, in August
we only came across eight financings, which brought in a total of $44.9 million
in new funds. This equates to more deals
but less capital than the six transactions and $90.4 million in funding
reported in August of 2009. Most of the activity this August took place in the
provinces of Ontario and Quebec, with four and three financings
respectively. The only other
announcement came out of Nova Scotia. Five of the financed businesses can be
classified as technology companies, three in Ontario
and two in Quebec. The other financings reported last month
involved a clean tech company, a biopharmaceutical developer, and a furniture
manufacturer. Only two of the financings
reported by private Canadian companies involved participation from a foreign
investor. At the same time, we saw three
deals in which a Canadian fund invested in a US company.
Financings of Canadian
Companies
Storage Appliance,
a Toronto-based provider of personal data back-up products, marketed under the Clickfree brand, raised $15 million as
part of a third round financing sponsored by Tandem Expansion Fund. The round of financing, the company’s third,
raises Storage Appliance’s total venture funding to slightly over
$30 million, with the last transaction prior to this being a $10 million raise
in April 2009 led by Toronto’s Jefferson
Partners.
The Investment
Accelerator Fund of Ontario has
invested $500,000 in seed funding in three Toronto based companies, for a total
investment of $1.5 Million. The
companies were Geminare, MedCurrent
Technologies and Receptor Therapeutics. Geminare
hosts a SaaS platform that offers disaster recovery solutions for small and
mid-sized businesses. MedCurrent
Technologies is developing workflow optimization software for radiologists.
Receptor
Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company focused on licensing and
developing anti-cancer therapies.
Seaforth Energy, a
Halifax-based manufacturer and exporter of wind turbines, raised $2 million in
financing. The money came from Innovacorp,
the Business Development Bank of Canada,
Seaforth
Engineering Group, and private investors.
Foliot Furniture, a Quebec based furniture manufacturer raised $5.5 Million
from FTQ, a union-based Venture
Capital Fund based out of Montreal.
US and International Activity in Canada
StatusNet, a Montreal-based
developer of open-source microblogging platforms, raised $1.4 million in a
financing round led by First Mark Capital (NY). The other financiers were BoldStart Ventures (NY), Inovia
Capital (QC), and Montreal Start-Up. This financing round brings the total
investment in the firm to date up to $2.3 million.
Montreal-based Accedian
Networks received $19.5 million from a group of investors led by Summit
Partners (MA). Return investors Rho
Ventures (NY) and Skypoint Capital also participated
in the round. Accedian Networks is a provider of high performance service
assurance solutions for Carrier Ethernet and IP networks, and markets
state-of-the-art network interface devices (NIDs) that help telecoms deal with
the rapid increase of mobile device usage and high network traffic that is
taking place in the present environment.
Canadian Investments Abroad
Canada’s Blackberry Partners
Fund was one of the investors behind an $11 million raise by NY-based Payfone.
The company has developed a mobile
payment processing platform geared toward facilitating the purchase of online
apps. The investment is Payfone’s second
round of financing. The company had
previously received capital from RRE Ventures (NY).
Wellington Financial,
one of Toronto’s
main venture debt players, invested $3.5
million in NJ-based Pivot and $5.5 million in Seattle-based
Telekenex.
Pivot
provides a number of liquidity management and collaboration software to
financial markets’ participants. Telekenex provides enterprise clients
with carrier-grade voice and data solutions. Telekenex
had previously received financing from several California-based funds, including
Walden Venture Capital, Altos Ventures and Industry
Ventures.
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