Nanosys files for IPO
mercurynews.com
NANOTECH INDUSTRY HOPES MOVE WILL HELP LEGITIMIZE HOT SECTOR
By Dean Takahashi ; Mercury News
In a move expected to draw wide attention to the field of nanotechnology, Silicon Valley start-up Nanosys has filed for an initial public offering.
The Palo Alto company plans to raise up to $115 million in an IPO so that it can further expand its research across a range of nanotechnology businesses, according to a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Nanotechnology involves the ability to manipulate materials on an atomic scale, taking advantage of the unique properties of molecules that are about 100 nanometers or less in width. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or 100,000 times narrower than the width of a human hair.
Nanotechnology has been a hot sector among venture capitalists for its potential to create entirely new industries. But critics have complained it is little more than overhyped science fiction. In that sense, the Nanosys IPO is viewed as a way to legitimize the fledgling industry.
``It's been very eagerly awaited by the nanotech business community,'' said David Forman, a staff writer at Small Times magazine, a nanotechnology journal in Ann Arbor, Mich. ``They are looked at as the poster child of nanotechnology, and people are looking to them to legitimize the field on Wall Street.''
In a January speech, Nanosys Chairman Larry Bock said he expected nanotechnology to revolutionize all industries the same way that plastics did.
His company has assembled an elite group of scientists who are figuring out how to apply nanotechnology to make better solar cells, flexible electronics, brighter displays, sensors and ultra-dense memory chips.
Nanosys was started by a team of researchers in July 2001 that included MIT veteran Stephen Empedocles. Bock, a biotech entrepreneur who has started more than a dozen companies, joined Nanosys in October 2001. He and CEO Calvin Chow assembled a star-studded cast of scientists, board members and backers.
Nanosys has raised more than $55 million in venture capital, from investors including Lux Capital, Polaris Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. It has cut joint development deals with DuPont, Intel and Matsushita Electric.
The company has licensed dozens of patents from key university researchers -- many of whom have joined the company -- in an attempt to create products across a wide number of industries. The aim is to fashion inorganic materials, such as molecules that look like toy jacks, into new kinds of electronic devices.
Those licensing deals and Nanosys' own patents have enabled it to strike deals with DuPont, which wants to use nanotechnology to create thin, flexible display screens. Matsushita hopes to create a new kind of solar panel with Nanosys, and Intel is tapping Nanosys to develop new kinds of memory chips that store data permanently.
As a company, Nanosys remains small. It has 34 employees in a small building in Palo Alto that resembles a hospital laboratory. The labs are filled with chemical vials connected by clear plastic tubes and powerful microscopes that can show details of the atoms that the scientists are manipulating.
Among the ideas, Empedocles said a couple of months ago, is to create a kind of super-velcro that could allow a person to walk up a glass wall.
Nanosys doesn't expect to have products for several years. In 2003, Nanosys had a loss of $9.2 million on revenues of $3 million, compared with a loss of $7.1 million a year earlier on revenues of $283,000, according to its regulatory filing. As of Dec. 31, Nanosys had $39 million in cash. To date, it has lost more than $17 million.
Nanosys on Friday would not comment after entering a so-called ``quiet period'' after its IPO filing.
The company gave no indication on when it plans to go public. Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, CIBC World Markets and Needham & Co. are underwriting the offering. The company plans to trade under the symbol NNYS on the Nasdaq. |
