An Irvine company is offering free data storage for the next six months to businesses affected by hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria.
Zadara Storage will provide up to 1 petabyte of storage for organizations and businesses in Puerto Rico, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida as they regain operations and rebuild or replace infrastructure. The storage can connect to its public cloud partners, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.
Chief Executive Nelson Nahum told the Business Journal he was moved by the volunteer relief efforts following the storms, which have killed more than 88 Americans and caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages.
“It was quite amazing,” he said. “These people need help. Next time, it could be us.”
Puerto Rico is still reeling from the disaster, with less than 20% of its 3.4 million population with power, 35% without access to safe, drinking water and 40% without cellphone service. Large swaths of the island nation, particularly on the western end and mountain areas, still hadn’t received aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other relief groups as of press time.
Zadara, which offers private cloud services to enterprises, said it will ship needed equipment to affected companies or provide its data center at no charge in an effort to recover backup systems and customer data, contracts, human resources records and financial systems, among other processes.
The company received a response within 10 minutes of sending the inquiry on Oct. 10 to existing and potential customers. One of the first companies to respond was a Houston service provider for the oil and gas industry.
“There is no commitment to do anything,” Nahum said. “We even pay for shipment of equipment back and forth.”
Zadara is in a growth spurt, doubling its top line last year past $10 million with a customer base of about 150. It’s raised $32 million since its 2011 inception and plans to raise about $25 million in a Series C venture capital round next year.
Zadara employs fewer than 100 workers, with offices beyond the Irvine Spectrum in Israel, the U.K., India, Germany and Australia.
FOX Veritone Customer
Costa Mesa-based Veritone Inc., which raised $37.5 million in a May initial public offering, has scored another customer for its developing artificial intelligence platform.
FOX Sports Brazil selected its on-premise aiWARE product to boost and index archived content and live streams. Its automated technology allows users to track advertisements and media comments in real time.
The deal expands Veritone’s presence in Latin America and its most populous country, where sales in the media and entertainment market are projected to hit $43.7 billion by 2021, up from $35 billion last year, according to PwC.
Manuel Monroy, a former investment director at Intel Capital and cloud designer at Intel Corp., is leading Veritone operations in Latin America.
The agreement with FOX Sports Brazil follows recent agreements with CBS RADIO and iHeartMedia to provide the broadcasters with near real-time ad and content tracking, analytics, and improved media management for their broadcasts, according to Veritone.
The company’s stock, traded under the Nasdaq ticker VERI, has been on a roller coaster ride since the IPO, peaking at $74.92 on Sept. 27 after favorable Barron’s coverage, then plummeting a day later to $36.88 after noted short seller and Citron Research founder Andrew Left roasted the company in a tweet, adding that the stock “should trade right back to $20.”
Shares were trading at about $38 late last week, with a market value of about $570 million. Its 12-month revenue through June was $12 million, the vast majority generated from its legacy media buying business.
Veritone hasn’t posted a profit since its 2014 inception, a common trait of emerging companies.
TTM Refinances
Costa Mesa-based TTM Technologies Inc. has completed a debt financing package that includes $375 million in senior notes and syndication of a $350 million senior secured loan.
The notes, due in 2025, and the senior loan, which matures a year earlier, were used to refinance existing debt of $650 million and pay down its revolving credit line of $80 million.
TTM projects the capital structure from the offering and new loan will result in annual cash interest savings of roughly $3.5 million, based on the London Interbank Offered Rate, commonly referred to as the LIBOR rate—the benchmark interest rate banks use when loaning to other banks.
TTM is the country’s largest printed circuit board maker, with 2016 sales of $2.5 billion, up nearly 21% over 2015. It posted a $34.8 million profit, compared to a $25.8 million loss a year earlier.
It’s the 14th largest public company in Orange County, with a recent market value of nearly $1.6 billion.
