BSD.L Regulatory News (BSD)

14 Feb 2005 07:01

Emblaze Ltd13 February 2005 Adamind IPO raises approximately £15 million at £46.7 million valuation Publication of Prospectus Ra'anana, Israel: Adamind Ltd. (Adamind or "the Company") announces that it willpublish its prospectus and submit its application for the admission ("Admission") of its ordinary shares ("Ordinary Shares") to trading on the AlternativeInvestment Market of the London Stock Exchange ("AIM"). Admission is expected tobecome effective, and trading in the Company's ordinary shares is expected tocommence, on 21 February 2005. The Company's ticker will be "ADA". The Company also announces that it has raised approximately £15 million beforeexpenses, in a placing (the "Placing") with UK institutions, underwritten byBridgewell, of 11,363,636 new ordinary shares at a price of 132 pence per share(the "Placing Price"). On Admission, the Company will have 35,363,636 ordinaryshares in issue and a market capitalisation, at the Placing Price, ofapproximately £46.7 million. The existing shareholders in Adamind are notselling any shares in the Placing which was significantly oversubscribed. Rationale for the IPO: The Directors believe that in order to capitalise on the opportunities availablein the Company's markets and enable management to focus its efforts solely onmedia technologies for the mobile infrastructure, it is appropriate for Adamindto seek to establish an independent identity. The Directors believe that Admission and the proceeds from the Placing willprovide the Company with the financial flexibility necessary for it to buildeffectively upon its established position as a leader in the media adaptationtechnology market and to capitalise on the predicted growth of the MobileContent Services market as a whole. Bridgewell is the Company's nominated adviser and broker. Commenting on the Placing, Shailendra Jain, Chief Executive Officer of Adamindsaid: "We are delighted about the overwhelming response from the institutionalshareholders. The proceeds of the Placing will enhance our profile with bothcurrent and future customers and give us the resources to materially increaseour sales and marketing effort to take full advantage of the forecast growth inthe sector." Eli Reifman, Chief Executive Officer of Emblaze said: "Our early entry into amarket that we believed would be bigger than SMS has positioned Adamind as aleading software company that sits in the heart of practically every major MMSCvendors system. This IPO will give Adamind the visibility and incentivise itsmanagement and employees to maximize the expected strong growth in their market." Enquiries: Adamind +44 20 7645 2990 on the day and thereafterShailendra Jain, CEO +1 408 468 3961 EmblazeDoron Cohen, Hagit Gal +972 9 7699831/ 339 PhilipsAndre Manning +31 20 5977199 BridgewellGiles Elliott, Simon Bridges, Stephen Cheung +44 20 7003 3000 Corfin CommunicationsHarry Chathli, Neil Thapar +44 20 7645 2990 NOTES TO EDITORS Company Overview Adamind is a provider of media adaptation software that enables multimediacontent applications and services to be accessible across disparate types ofconsumer devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants ("PDAs") andpersonal computers ("PCs"). Adamind's core solution is branded MediaSpire and is primarily targeted atmultimedia messaging service centre ("MMSC") vendors competing in the multimediamessaging service ("MMS") infrastructure arena, mobile telecoms operators ("Operators") and providers of content services accessible over mobile wirelessnetworks ("Content Providers"). Adamind sells software licenses for its mediaadaptation products on an initial licence fee basis, a usage capacity basis andalso charges a recurring annual support fee. Adamind's technologies solve the problem of person-to-person ("P2P") mediatransmission (one person sending images, video and ring tones, for example, toanother person) between devices that are incompatible due to differingconfigurations and enable Operators to launch commercial MMS services that areavailable across a variety of different mobile phones and other devices. Inaddition, Adamind's solution provides media adaptation for theapplication-to-person ("A2P") content delivery market to enable A2P contentservices to take place. A2P defines premium content services which originatefrom Operators or Content Providers and are targeted to many consumers at thesame time. As part of its A2P media adaptation offering, Adamind can offerfurther value-added services embedded within its software solution which could,for example, include an advertising and branding platform. Adamind was established as a separate company in 2004 following the merger ofthe media adaptation business units of Emblaze (LSE: BLZ) and Philips (AEX:PHIA, NYSE: PHG) with the goal of forming a global leader in media adaptationtechnology. MMS Overall Market Development The market in which Operators participate is highly competitive and they arecontinually focused on gaining subscribers and improving average revenue peruser ("ARPU") which has traditionally been driven by voice calls. However,despite the rise in overall number of subscribers, Operators' ARPU has steadilydeclined over the past 10 years as air time has become commoditised and voicecall revenues and profits have decreased. Faced with this, Operators haveaggressively sought data based ARPU generators. These include the short messageservice ("SMS"), MMS, games and other content services. With the significanthistoric success of SMS and the expected plateauing of revenue from SMS in keyglobal regions, Operators are now investing in the natural evolution of SMS,MMS, with the expectation of achieving similar rates of growth and revenue. MMS based services are considered by the Operators to be a key factor ingenerating ARPU growth and reducing churn. MMS enabled handsets have beengrowing and are expected to represent approximately 50 per cent. of all handsetssold in 2004, creating the demand required for the launch of commercial MMSservices into the market. Mobile phone vendors such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung,Siemens and Sony-Ericsson, that currently account for approximately 70 per cent.of the MMS handsets manufactured, continue to introduce new MMS enabled phonesto the market on a regular basis. The Directors believe around $3 billion willbe spent on MMS infrastructure in the next 4 years. With their focus on MMS services, Operators must make interoperability betweendevices a certainty by employing media adaptation technologies for a seamlessusage experience independent of the source and destination device types. Withoutmedia adaptation, almost every MMS transaction will be a lost transaction asmessages will not reach the target user or will reach them in an illegible ordistorted format. The Directors believe that the growth in mobile messaging media adaptation willbe driven by the growth in MMS usage. The P2P MMS services and usage market isforecast to grow to $13 billion in 2008, of which the Directors estimate theMMSC related vendor's revenue to be $1 billion. The Directors believe mediaadaptation represents between $100 million and $200 million of the MMSC relatedvendor's revenue. Key Advantages of Adamind's Technology The Directors believe that Adamind has now established itself as a leading mediaadaptation technology provider for MMS and that the following factorsdifferentiate Adamind from its competitors and represent barriers to entry forpotential entrants: Multi-Format Adaptation - The multi-format approach enables the service providerto build a product with a clear upgrade path to support the next generation ofdevices, formats, media types, protocols and services. Modular Architecture - To address the challenge of multi-component integration(i.e. media adaptation, message adaptation, Device Management Tool and unlimitedapplications) while reducing MMSC vendor dependency and maintaining the abilityto easily support, upgrade and maintain the system, Adamind has developed a setof Application Programming Interfaces that allow quick and easy integration toany existing or future MMS or content download platform. Applications Over Core - Adamind's MediaSpire technology is easily extendableinto other applications which ensures a short development cycle and a low costof ownership for each and every application added into MediaSpire. Suchapplications will include value added services such as advertisement, digitalrights management and anti-abuse software which can be built on top of the coreplatform, thus reducing the time and resources required for further developmentand customisation. Proven Product - Adamind currently has over 80 operational deployments andcontinues to build more as a result of the strong relationships it hasestablished with the MMSC vendors. Adamind's technology is now known andaccepted in the market and both MMSC vendors and Operators are keen to work withthem. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange