A Medical Device Daily
BA Venture Partners (BAVP; Foster City, California), a venture capital partnership providing capital and expertise for life science and technology firms, reported closing its $400 million BAVP Fund VII, those monies to be invested over the next four years.
The investment team — headed by managing directors Kate Mitchell, Lou Bock, Mark Brooks, Rory O'Driscoll, Jim Jones and Sharon Wienbar — said it will target both earlyand development-stage opportunities in semiconductors, networking and consumer electronics; Internet and wireless services and software-as-service applications; and therapeutics for oncology, inflammation, neurology and dermatology.
In the medical devices arena, the directors will “add-ress,“ BAVP said, orthopedic, cardiovascular and neurological markets. Mitchell said that “close to $100 million“ would be invested in companies targeting therapeutics.
BAVP said it foresees “a positive investment climate in 2005,“ exceeding 2004. It reported investing $120 million in 32 companies in 2004 “and drove five liquidity events, including two acquisitions and three initial public offerings [IPOs].“
Since its inception in 1995, BAVP said that since 1995 it has funded and assisted some 93 companies.
It said it typically leads financing rounds with initial investments of $2 million to $15 million and $5 million to $20 million over a deal's life cycle.
Recent “liquidity events“ it reported include the Citrix acquisition of Net6; the Microsoft acquisition of PlaceWare; Checkpoint's acquisition of Zone Labs; and Silicon Labs' acquisition of Cygnal, in addition to the IPOs of VNUS (Medical Device Daily, Oct. 20, 2004), Acusphere, Dynavax and Monolithic Power Systems.
QMed (Eatontown, New Jersey), a provider of disease management (DM) services to healthcare plans and Medi-care, reported a private placement of 635,555 shares of common stock to institutional investors, generating gross proceeds of $7.15 million.
A transaction price of $11.25 represents a 4.1% discount to the average of the closing prices for the 15 trading days ended Feb. 11.
In addition to common stock, the company will issue rights to purchase 158,889 shares of common stock at $11.75 a share. These rights will expire 30 days after the effective date of a resale registration statement.
The institutional investors exercised their rights to purchase 142,857 shares of the company's common stock. The transaction generated proceeds of nearly $1.58 million to the company. The company said the combined new capital will be used to execute its strategic plan and increase available cash to more than $20 million.
First Albany Capital acted as exclusive placement agent in connection with the transaction.
QMed provides disease management services to patients and physicians around the country through its health plan customers and has been selected in two Medicare demonstrations to test the feasibility of reimbursing its care-coordinated DM services in the Medicare fee-for-service program.
New name for Stinger Industries
Stinger Industries (Murfreesboro, Tennessee) reported that it has changed its name to Stinger Medical. Stinger said it is “best known“ as the provider of the Levitator mob-ile workstation.
CEO and company founder Gary Coonan said the name Stinger Medical better reflects the company's focus on providing mobile solutions and a “new dedication to providing medical technologies to the healthcare industry.“
Stinger said its transition to healthcare offerings began last fall with the acquisition of Integriti Systems (Seattle), maker of the integriti automated vital signs solution. Stinger said that, in addition, it will introduce two new mobile workstation lines, a new power system, improved warranty, installation and on-site care services, backed by an expanded sales force.