Fund IV portfolio co. NanoLumens files for TSX IPO

As one of our Fund IV portfolio companies markets its NYSE IPO with JP Morgan this week (see prior post “Wellington Financial portfolio co. Xactly files for NYSE IPO” May 19-15), another Fund IV co., NanoLumens, filed its preliminary prospectus yesterday for a listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. That syndicate is being led by Canaccord Genuity, with CIBC World Markets, National Bank Financial, Beacon and Euro Pacific.

Consider these NanoLumens figures:

2013 sales: US$6.5 million
2014 sales: US$18.0 million

As I wrote last year when we closed the NanoLumens financing, whether you live in Boston, Hawaii, New York, Sao Paulo, Toronto or Thackerville, Oklahoma, you can get a glimpse of the different ways that the world’s leader for visualization solutions is helping institutions and companies market their wares and engage with the public. In the small world category, the technology that forms the backbone of the company’s various products was originally developed at McMaster University, here in Ontario.

Our US$5 million round was joined by another US$8.3 million in new equity raised from Canadian institutional investors and NanoLumens’ existing private equity shareholder. Euro Pacific Canada Inc. served as the exclusive agent on the 2014 financing.

At the time, NanoLumens’ clients included a broad range of marketers covering the fields of broadcast, casinos, control rooms, convention centers, DOOH, higher education, hospitality, retail, stadiums, and transportation including AIG, Bally’s, CBS Outdoor, CCTV, CNN, Charles Schwab, Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, Estee Lauder, ESPN, GTE Financial, Holt-Renfrew, Invesco, Macy’s, Nike, Terra, Turner, Universal Studios Florida, Uniqlo, and the new World Trade Center Freedom Tower, among many others.

Any visitor to Oxford’s Yorkdale Shopping Mall in Toronto will be impressed with the clarity of the gorgeous 2-storey NanoLumens electronic walls outside of the Holt Renfrew department store.

In our business, two IPOs in the market at the same time is incredibly rare…and the definition of a great week. Provided the Greek Parliament doesn’t decide to burns its house down over the next few days.

Our business model has been refined over the past 15 years, but our core goal is to back the best growth companies in North America. Give them the right amount of capital at less than half the cost of equity, and help them succeed wherever we can. Seeing this kind of positive reinforcement from Wall Street and Bay Street investment banks speaks to the quality of the companies we are backing.

Xactly is based in San Jose. NanoLumens in Atlanta. Both transactions were sourced from our Toronto office, and are examples of the reality that over the past 6 years, our portfolio has gone from being 0% to 80% U.S.-based. Money from our Canadian pension plan and institutional limited partners winds up in the coffers of a Silicon Valley-based software company that ultimately files for a New York Stock Exchange listing. Canada and the U.S. have truly become one capital market, as these two firms clearly demonstrate.

Best wishes to the management teams at both Xactly and NanoLumens as they experience these important corporate milestones.

MRM