ETH-Zürich spin-out raises CHF135.6 million in IPO

IPO

Global positioning system (GPS) specialist u-blox, founded in 1997 by a former research team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH, raised CHF135.6 million in its initial public offering on the Swiss Stock Exchange.

The IPO gives the company a market capitalisation of CHF318.4 million (US$274 million).

Thomas Seiler, Chief Executive Officer of u-blox, said the money will be used to support the development of sales and marketing. “As a leading technology provider in the GPS market, u-blox is in an excellent position to take advantage of the exceedingly strong market growth for GPS chipsets and GPS modules that is expected in the coming years.” 

One of the largest venture capital backers of the firm was 3i plc of London. Hansjoerg Sage, 3i Director on the u-blox board, commented, “We are delighted to have worked with the u-blox team over the last 6 years, through some challenging times in the technology markets, to achieve this impressive result.”

3i noted that u-box is the first fabless semiconductor integrated circuit company to IPO on a European stock exchange since Cambridge Silicon Radio (also backed by 3i) floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2003.