Irvine-based business software maker Kofax PLC has priced shares for an initial public offering in one of the last requirements before its long-awaited debut on an American exchange.
The company will sell 2 million common shares between $5.25 and $6.25 per share in an IPO expected in the coming days, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Its underwriter, Minneapolis-based Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC, has an option to purchase up to 300,000 additional common shares.
Kofax, which is publicly traded in London but maintains its headquarters in Irvine, projects it will raise about $7.7 million through the IPO after fees and other costs. The proceeds will be invested in short-term bank deposits or interest-bearing, investment-grade securities, the company said in regulatory filings.
Kofax and its chief executive, Reynolds Bish—who couldn’t be reached for comment on the pending move—have long considered a public offering in the U.S. but refrained due to a volatile trading environment in the economic recovery.
“When the financial market improves, we’re in position to do it,” Bish told the Business Journal in an interview in 2011.
U.S. Base
It appears the winds have changed for Kofax, particularly as the company relies more on its U.S. operation and customer base.
“As the Kofax group becomes an increasingly U.S.-centric business, the board believes the company needs to access the leading financial market for global software companies in order to better pursue its organic revenue growth and acquisition strategies,” Kofax Board Chairman Greg Lock said a few months ago.
The company moved its operational base to Irvine in 2008.
It makes scanning software used by businesses to streamline the flow of information, eliminate paper, speed productivity, reduce costs and improve customer service.
Kofax posted operational income of $25.1 million on record revenue of $266.3 in the 12 months through June, the end of its fiscal year.
It’s the county’s seventh largest software maker, with 274 local employees, according to Business Journal research. It employs about 1,250 people in 32 countries companywide.
Its largest customers include JPMorgan Chase and Co., Thomson Reuters and Allianz SE, the German parent of investment manager Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach.
KFX.L
Kofax has established a parent company, Kofax Ltd., which is incorporated in Bermuda and based in Irvine, as part of the process to publicly trade shares in the U.S.
Kofax will maintain a dual listing, trading under the symbol KFX on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and KFX.L on the London Stock Exchange, where its stock has been hovering around $6 per share.
The company is expected to have a market value of about $481 million to $597 million, with some 91.6 million shares outstanding following the offering.
That would place it in the middle ranks of the 50 largest publicly-traded companies in Orange County, approaching the level of Irvine-based homebuilder TRI Pointe Homes Inc., which has a $629.1 million market capitalization.
Tri Pointe, which raised about $233 million in January, was the first home builder in the country to go public in nearly nine years.
Kofax’s public offering would be Orange County’s third of the year on a major exchange and the first in the technology sector here since Clean Energy Fuels Corp. raised $120 million in May 2007.
Clean Energy in Newport Beach is the world’s largest builder and operator of natural gas fueling stations in the U.S. Legendary oilman and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens cofounded it as a tiny part of his Dallas-based Mesa Petroleum about 25 years ago and split it off in the late 1990s.
City Ventures
Other OC companies considering a public offering include Newport Beach-based homebuilder City Ventures Inc., which filed plans with the SEC in June to raise $150 million in an IPO, and Aliso Viejo-based Telogis Inc.
Telogis, which makes navigation software, raised $93 million in a Series A funding round in October led by Menlo Park-based investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a move that was pegged as a “bridge” to an anticipated IPO in mid-2014.
