A company that has designed a new interactive white board, Smart Technologies Inc., is now going public after 2 decades of providing such devices for school classrooms. In what comes as an impressive feat to many analysts, the company has already managed to raise over half a billion dollars in its efforts to launch its IPO and that makes it the 2nd biggest initial public offering in the United States for the year 2010. The company, based in Canadian city of Calgary, has priced over 38 million Class A shares at an affordable cost of $17 each after offering a bit over 35 million at prices between $16 and $18 per share. From what the Securities and Exchange Commission filing said, along with a statement from Smart Technologies itself, 23 percent of the proceeds will go to the company. The rest of the proceeds will go to selling share holders such as Apax Partners and Intel Corp. who will be pulling in more than 6 times what they invested in profits – a smart move for both companies, according to financial experts who have analyzed the long term gains from the IPO.
This IPO is also the biggest sale that any tech company has seen in Canada for more than 10 years and is right in line with other Canadian firms looking to raise over $1 billion, all told, this week alone. In the United States, IPOs are also at a high, the highest since 2007′s final quarter. This is good news for the stock markets and the hi tech world both, signalling that things may be getting back on track for both parts of the market now.
