Goodbody forecasts flotations for Irish tech firms

A number of Irish technology and life science companies are expected to float on stock exchanges in the next 12 months according to Mark O'Donovan, director of Goodbody Stockbrokers.

Speaking yesterday at the company's annual SummIT conference, which showcases promising privately-held technology companies to an audience of investors and financial advisers, Mr O'Donovan said most would probably opt for a joint listing on the Alternative Investment Market in London and the Irish Enterprise Exchange in Dublin.

He pointed to data that showed initial public offerings by venture capital (VC) backed companies in the US regressed last year, with just 41 companies raising $2.2 billion (€1.8 billion). In contrast, initial public offering (IPO) activity is growing in Europe with 60 VC-backed companies going to the markets and raising just over €2 billion.

While the US still dominates Europe in terms of the amount of equity investment going into early-stage firms, the amount raised by European investors, including VCs, private equity and buyout firms, more than doubled last year to €36.4 million.

Both sources of capital are also feeding into increased merger and acquisition activity on both sides of the Atlantic. In recent months, two Irish software firms, Similarity Systems and Steeltrace, have been sold to US companies with significant upside for their investors.

Despite this, Mr O'Donovan says it can still be extremely difficult to raise funds for investments in technology start-ups.

"I could raise €20 million for a property investment in a week, but it could take six months to raise the same funds for technology companies," he said.

Simon Clark, managing director of Fidelity Ventures, spoke about the favourable environment that led it to make significant investments in two Irish software companies, Curam and Qumas. Qumas presented at the event last year and Fidelity subsequently led a $20 million investment round in the company.

Mr Clark said Ireland was a "great place to do business" due to a community of entrepreneurs, knowledgable local VCs, and a sensible Government policy towards entrepreneurs.

A total of 18 privately held companies seeking funding presented at the event. The vast majority of these came from the life sciences and software sectors.