The Irvine-based 5G wireless technology equipment maker said March 1 that it had named Broadcom alumnus Ruehle its chief financial officer to drive the next phase of the company’s rapid growth.
Taking the company public is “certainly an alternative,” Ruehle told the Business Journal on March 12, adding that a buyout by another company is also among the options.
“You stage a company prepared to be a public company whatever the outcome is going to be, because that means you’re going to build the right things at the company. You wind up getting a very attractive buyout offer, OK, you consider that. Or you take the company to the public market. You keep your options open.”
He did not provide a time frame for such possible changes.
“The least likely is it stays a private company forever,” he said of the three options. “That’s not likely to happen.”
Broadcom IPO
Ruehle’s success at Broadcom is well known.
Ruehle joined what’s now Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: AVGO) in 1997, when it was based in Irvine, and managed its successful IPO and hyper revenue growth that created one of Orange County’s best-known, and most valuable, technology firms.
When he left Broadcom in 2006, the company was the leader in wireless communications semiconductors with revenue of $3.6 billion and a market cap in excess of $20 billion.
Rofougaran Siblings
He sees echoes of Broadcom in 5-year-old Movandi, which has raised about $70 million in funding to date, including a $27 million Series C a year ago. “I joined Movandi on the assumption that it has a very bright future,” Ruehle said. “I think the company is in a very strong position.”
Scott Burri, who had been CFO and is also a Movandi co-founder, has assumed the newly created position of chief administrative officer of the company, which counts 50 employees in Orange County.
Ruehle said this is the second time he has had the opportunity to work with Movandi co-founders Maryam Rofougaran and her brother Reza Rofougaran. The siblings are former executives at Broadcom, which moved its headquarters from Irvine to San Jose after it was acquired by Avago Technology Inc. in 2016.
“I was first introduced to Maryam and Reza when I acquired their company Innovent while at Broadcom in 2000 and watched them grow Broadcom’s wireless business to over a billion dollars and shipping billions of radios per year,” according to Ruehle.
“Most of my career has been with joining early-stage companies. Some of them I’ve been fortunate enough to get up to be very large companies,” Ruehle said.
“Can I help Movandi get to be a large public company? I’d love to do that. That’s what keeps me going.”
Prior to Broadcom, in 1987 he was the CFO of SynOptics Communications Inc. and led their IPO in 1988 and the merger with Wellfleet in 1994 that created Bay Networks.
Ruehle served most recently as financial chief of Bitvore, which applies artificial intelligence to the finance services industry.
5G Millimeter Wave
Among various industry developments, Verizon Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: VZ) said last May it will use equipment from Movandi to help expand its 5G networks.
Movandi is focused on new 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) technology and RF systems solutions. 5G is short for the fifth generation of cellular wireless technology on its way in the U.S and is said to have download speeds 100 times faster than 4G.
“Bill is an ideal fit for Movandi as we further solidify our position as the leader in 5G,” said Maryam Rofougaran.
The siblings’ task is to help keep the super-fast system’s signal moving across all sorts of terrain filled with various obstacles. The 5G millimeter wave networks can carry a lot of data, but there have been questions about the networks’ suitability over long distances.
The company makes a variety of integrated circuits, antennas, systems and algorithms designed to be used by operators of 5G wireless networks.
