Wireless Data Platform Company Motricity Plans IPO

Last week TMCnet reported that GENBAND may be doing an initial public offering next year. This week there's news that another tech company, Motricity (News - Alert) Inc., plans to do an IPO next week.

The latter company, which aims to raise $101 million in the offering, plays in the mobile data space with its mCore platform. The product - which is used by such major wireless carriers as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon (News - Alert) Wireless, an well as enterprise customers - includes portal, marketplace, connect, search, managed Web, mobile campaign management, messaging, billing and settlement capabilities. Motricity offers these capabilities to carriers and other businesses on a hosted, managed service basis.

According to reports, Motricity in an SEC filing says it will sell 6.8 million shares for $14 to $16 each, which will mark its debut on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol MOTR.

The Wall Street Journal in February reported that the "IPO market has gotten off to a wretched start in 2010," but noted that bankers nonetheless were optimistic about a pickup on this front for the year as a whole. While the past two years has seen few IPOs as the country, and the world at large, continues to reel from the economic slowdown, the prospect of going public now looks like a very real possibility for more companies. So far this year, 48 companies nationally have raised $7.2 billion by going public, according to a recent Dallas Business Journal story.

As discussed in the TMCnet story last week about GENBAND, that company's leader, Charles Vogt (News - Alert), revealed plans for a possible IPO in recent reports.

That shouldn't come as a surprise, given GENBAND has significantly built its portfolio and revenues over time both through acquisitions and organic growth. That includes purchasing NextPoint Networks in the fall of 2008, Tekelec's Switching Solutions Group in April 2007, Nokia (News - Alert) Siemens Networks' Surpass IP trunking gateway product lines in April 2008, and both BayPackets Inc. and the Digital Central Office business of Siemens Networks LLC in late 2006.

Additionally, Vogt earlier this month named a new CFO, Daryl Raiford, who previously served as vice president of finance and business transformation at publicly traded, Fortune 500 Freescale Semiconductor.

Just six years ago GENBAND had $2 million in sales and 80 employees. Today it boasts $800 million in sales and 2,200 employees. GENBAND ranked 63rd on Deloitte's (News - Alert) 2009 Technology Fast 500, a listing of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies in North America. Rankings are based on percentage of fiscal year revenue growth over five years. From 2004 to 2008, GENBAND grew a whopping 2,869 percent.