Alien Gives Up Its IPO Efforts
Written by Evan SchumanEight days after it said it was preparing for an IPO on a day-to-day basis, Alien Technology–which had been granted the RFID trading symbol–has given up the attempt, according to a statement the company issued on Friday.
“Alien Technology Corporation today announced that the company has withdrawn its Registration Statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission and has determined not to proceed with the registration and sale of its common stock at this time” the statement said.
Alien CEO Stav Prodromou updated the company’s earlier position, which was that they would go public when market conditions improved.
?Alien has decided not to proceed with an IPO at this time due to market conditions,? Prodromou said. ?While we are evaluating the options for our future financing needs, we are taking prudent cost reduction actions to continue to effectively manage and grow our business and support our customers going forward.?
The move was expected, as many industry analysts had questioned whether the timing was right for such a move, both because of industry-wide RFID challenges and Alien-specific hurdles.
In last week’s StorefrontBacktalk Week-In-Review audiocast, a panel of analysts concluded that the IPO had little chance of success.
And earlier this week, IDC analyst Pete Abell–who Alien officials had criticized for being too harsh–pointed to this week’s announcement by Texas Instruments of its new UHF RFID chip and said that it “really nails the coffin closed on Alien’s IPO.”
The fact that Alien is the first pureplay RFID vendor to try and go public–not to mention the fact that it won the heretofore-thought-to-be-coveted RFID trading symbol–made it an easy symbol for the RFID market in general. A year or so ago, that would be unmitigatingly positive force. Today, however, it’s a very mixed bag.
Alien?s IPO had been aimed at raising about $100 million, but it?s original offering documents raised concerns because of the IPO-candid way it had of discussing it?s inability to accurately predict the market and its own sales.
-Marc
August 5th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
I hate to say I told you so on this one. It is better for the RFID IPO market that companies which have good fundamentals and solid business models get their opportunity to make the fledgling RFID market one where small investors will have a better chance to get a decent return on their investment.
August 6th, 2006 at 4:28 am
Forget it! RFID is expensive, and unreliable. It will never surpass Barcode, nevermind replace it.